Life Hence
by Drea Leeways
Summary: Sequel to “A Flawless Plan” (thus HD SLASH). Basically, Brooding!Harry, Undead!Draco and an Evil Book, not necessarily in that order. As always, the boys seemed destined to be unhappy, but will they choose to be unhappy together?
1. Default Chapter

**Title**: Life Hence

**Author name**: Drea Leeways

**Categories**: angst, slash, drama, melodrama & (possibly) humour of a (possibly) dark variety

**Rating**: R

**Spoilers**: SS/PS, CoS, PoA, GoF, OotP, QttA

**Summary**: Sequel to "A Flawless Plan" (thus H/D slash). Basically, Brooding!Harry, Undead!Draco and an Evil Book, not necessarily in that order. As always, the boys seemed destined to be unhappy, but will they choose to be unhappy together?

**DISCLAIMER**: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

**Author's Note**: It's been more than a year since I promised this sequel, so I wouldn't be surprised if nobody remembers "A Flawless Plan" by now. Anyway, there comes a time for everything, so I'm uploading the first few chapters I managed to put together so far; they've been lurking on my hardware for way too long. To those of you who waited all this time, I apologise for the delay.

A lot of people wrote wonderful things about "A Flawless Plan". This new piece of writing is dedicated to them, but everyone is welcome to read and enjoy. I hope it won't disappoint anyone and that you won't find this continuation unnecessary. Honestly, I don't think I could've 'killed' Draco at the end of AFP if I hadn't already made up my mind to write this sequel. And I did promise a happy-ending of sorts for the boys.

(For a strange reason, every link I put on this page disappears. You can find my e-mail address and the link to "A Flawless Plan" on my author page here on ffnet.)

**Warnings**: a) This is slash, so consider yourself warned (or, as the case stands, invited ::grins::). If it's not your cup of tea then don't read it. Also, if you have no idea what 'slash' means (apart from "1. sharp sweeping stroke or, 2. long and deep cut or, 3. slit in fabric or, 4. debris from cut trees or, 5. print character Technical name virgule or, 6. swampy ground"—all according to the "Encarta® Pocket Dictionary"), you probably don't want to read this story.

b) Somewhat far-fetched plot. Or maybe I just spent too much time mulling over it…

c) Possibly unspotted (by me, that is) spelling/grammatical mistakes. Which is another way to say that this fic is not beta-ed, except by my evil, other-personality who calls herself 'Benny' and skipped all her English classes. ;-)

Chapter One

A Night Out

-o–#–O–#–o-

"Oh, what you do in your head,

you do in your head,

oh, if he's dead…"

(Suede, "He's Dead")

-o–#–O–#–o-

Tick-tock, sang the Snitch-clock on the wall. Second after second after second, louder and louder, the tick-tocks made Harry's temples throb, rendering him unable to rest. He'd never noticed how noisy the bloody device was, but then, he'd only had it for a couple of days—a predictable Christmas present from his equally predictable team mates. It even had a pair of Snitch-wings attached and they fluttered in an annoying manner, perfectly synchronised with the tick-tocks—the damned tick-tocks whispering into Harry's mind 'eight o'clock already', which meant there were only four hours left until midnight.

Slowly, deliberately, Harry pointed his wand at the clock and shattered it to pieces. Now, at least, he could just sit and swallow his misery in silence. It didn't make much difference, Harry realised soon enough. He still rather felt like shattering his own, throbbing head to pieces.

Only four hours left—::Tick-tock,:: his mind mocked him—until midnight. But no, he wouldn't think! He closed his fists furiously, nails digging into flesh.

He.

Would.

Not.

Think.

Not again, not tonight! Tonight he would forget, for a change.

He briefly considered crashing the empty bottle in his left hand into the opposite wall and see if the noise bound to follow would make him feel better, before realizing that considering it as opposed to just doing it defied the whole purpose. He was feeling so low he couldn't even vent his anger properly. Perhaps he should go out, get senselessly drunk, find a pretty girl to keep him company… that was easy because he was Harry Potter after all, who had courageously—Harry snorted—defeated Voldemort… but why not a pretty boy instead, his mind deviously suggested… but no, it would remind him of… Harry winced.

All he wanted was to forget.

He stood up from the sofa hastily, only to find that his legs were shaking and he was overwhelmed with dizziness, the sort of dizziness one usually experiences when being hung upside-down from the ceiling. Or, depending on perspective, when the rest of the world decides to hung itself downside-up on you. Because one year (minus approximately four hours) ago that was precisely what had happened to Harry's world—it had incomprehensibly rotated, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on a vertical line while leaving him rooted to the spot, and nothing had made much sense ever since.

For instance, there was a huge Caerphilly Catapults poster hanging on the northern wall of his living-room and Harry was in it.

He stumbled across the room under Hedwig's disapproving gaze, scowling at his own moving picture. Blue was definitely not his colour and that particular nuance of blue... Better not go in there. He had been playing Seeker for the Catapults since graduation, though. They'd given him this flat, and for some unfathomable reason they'd also charmed the poster to stick to the wall, so it had to stay there whether Harry liked it or not. And he might occasionally act like he didn't, but the truth was he didn't care. Playing for the Catapults had been nothing more and nothing less than a random decision meant to prevent people from pestering him any further about his "plans for the future".

Like it had been any of their bloody business!

**Seven months ago, Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry…**

It all started with Colin Creevey and his tendency to meddle in things that didn't concern him. Namely, Harry's life.

"What about you, Harry?"

The breakfast topic of discussion at the Gryffindor table was future careers, but Harry hadn't so far expressed any interest in sharing. He desperately pretended he was busy swallowing his pumpkin juice.

"You're going to work for the Ministry, aren't you, Harry?" Colin continued to pry.

Luckily, one could never run out of pumpkin juice because the goblets were self-refilling.

"I think it's brilliant that you want to be an Auror, Harry."

Harry wondered if he would be the first lucky wizard ever to determine just how much pumpkin juice a person could swallow before bursting like a spring-well.

"Course, people talk. Selma McDougal from Hufflepuff keeps telling every dumbskull who'd listen that you're going to work for Gringotts, but I told her—

"Harry, are you—

"Hey, where you going, Harry—

"Harry?…"

"Must be all that pumpkin juice," Dean Thomas helpfully offered between snorts of laughter. Harry failed to see what was so funny. He'd had it one too many times. Perhaps people like Colin liked to chatter incessantly about their future and their plans, but Harry only wanted to be left alone. So he stood up, walked to the Gryffindor tower and into his room, grabbed a letter from the large pile of letters on his bed offering him jobs, glanced briefly at the sender's name (he couldn't have cared less even if it did turn out to be Gringotts), scribbled a hasty response, tied it to Hedwig's leg and returned to the Great Hall to announce he was going to play Seeker for the Caerphilly Catapults, now kindly leave me the fuck alone!

At first, the sole reaction was the uneasy silence—if you didn't count the clicking of Colin's camera. The eldest of the Creevey brothers, who seemingly never parted with aforementioned device, promptly immortalised The Boy Who Lived Losing His Temper. Throughout the Hall mouths had fallen wide open, for reasons varying from the shock of hearing Harry swearing in front of the entire professorial staff to the shock of registering the full significance of his words. And then the whispers started.

…Oh, my! Did he… the F-word?!... Wow… Really?... Whispers, whispers.

…Wait a minute, Harry Potter was not going to work for the Ministry, experience a surprisingly quick political ascension and become the youngest Minister for Magic ever?!… More whispers.

…Holy Kneazle! He's going to do something as trivial as Quidditch instead!!!?... Bloody whispers everywhere.

…Hey, Creevey, I told you talked shite... And suddenly nobody bothered to whisper anymore.

…Whoa, Harry Potter was actually going to be a professional Quidditch player, how awesome!!!... Nobody asked Harry if he cared for their opinions.

…brilliant!!!...

…so told you!…

…irresponsible!...

…stuff about Gringotts was garbage…

…don't get it…

…should start collecting autographs while he's still around…

…calling the "Prophet"?...

…hey, Harry, smile! Click.

…but bloody hell, Harry, the Catapults?!...

And then, there was Ron, rather taken aback by his friend seemingly incomprehensible decision.

"…the Catapults?! Honestly, Harry! And you… never… a word," he blurted to Harry, a look of not-understanding on his face, and Harry was slightly amused noticing that his friend had picked Hermione's verbal habits, before realising that Ron had probably been hurt, if not by his decision in itself, then by the way it had come as a complete, not so pleasant surprise to him. Hell, it had come as a surprise to Harry himself, but it wasn't like Ron would feel any better knowing it.

"You could have at least chosen the Cannons," Ron continued, "if you wanted a team that…erm…well, y'know, hasn't won a game in… like… I mean… Seriously, Harry!"

Harry wanted to tell him that he couldn't care less about the team he would be playing for, but couldn't bring himself to utter the words so he only shrugged instead. The Catapults hadn't played a decent game in decades. It hardly mattered to him.

"It wasn't meant to be," he said silently, but the session of laughter ignited at their table by Ron's confusion—a confused Ron always looked too much like a child deprived of his favourite toy to be generally taken seriously—covered up his words. Harry had the impression that somehow his friend had heard him nonetheless, but Ron joined the others in their cheerfulness and Harry felt relieved that the redhead wasn't really mad at him.

Not meant to be. Much as he hated the words, Harry had come to accept, bitterly, that things happened to him because they were meant to, and didn't happen for the opposite reason. Defeating Voldemort had happened because it had been 'destined'. While him and Draco Malfoy couldn't have been 'destined', not in the least probable of all the probable worlds. So that was why it couldn't have happened—the two of them together in the real world, not in some sort of twisted fantasy of theirs, marred by fears, insecurities and madness, by hate and betrayal and dangerous mind games. Or plainly stupid. Or useless. He wasn't sure.

He'd been telling himself things like that just to be able to keep going. When Harry announced his choice of career, more than five months had already passed since what most people remembered as the night of Harry's triumph over darkness, and barely anyone as the night of Draco's death, but the ache born in his chest on that night had stayed. Harry hadn't been able to stop thinking about him and about how he and Malfoy hadn't been 'meant to be'. About how essentially wrong it had been—his abnormal, revolting, immoral, shameless needs—but also intoxicating, and mind-numbing, and soothing at the same time, and how he'd wanted it all so badly.

Things settled down somewhat after school had finally come to an end. He moved to Cardiff, because the Catapults' manager had insisted and because it was far enough from the Dursleys to meet Harry's complete approval. Once he arrived there, the team management gave him a flat in a Muggle neighborhood, Hermione cast the Fidelius Charm upon it and became his Secret-Keeper so that no unwanted guests would bother him. (All appearances indicated there were quite a lot of unwanted guests who would have loved to—journalists, Catapults fans, other teams' fans, well, suffice to say that if being famous hadn't been exactly a pleasure ride when he was inside Hogwarts walls, it drifted even further from it when he suddenly found himself outside them.) On the plus side, he had practice sessions almost every day to keep him distracted. He didn't bother much about furnishing and spent his rare days when he wasn't training simply staring at the bare walls, which caused Ron and Hermione to fret. Granted, they stopped worrying about his under-furnished flat and wall-staring tendencies after he almost killed himself in his first game as a professional.

And what a game it had been!

His team was playing the Tutshill Tornados—a pretty boring game (not to mention they were losing) until Harry pointed his broom to the ground and accelerated. The Snitch danced cheerfully right under his nose, almost as if taunting him before starting to drop to the ground like a ray of sun. It was supposed to be an impossible catch. The other Seeker wasn't even trying. Still, Harry didn't hesitate. Forcing his every muscle to stay tensed, prepared to pull out of the crazy dive not one moment too soon, he rushed to the ground in what appeared to be a suicidal dive. The Snitch was hovering only inches above the grass when his hand closed over it, but this hadn't been only about the desire to catch the Snitch and win. With the rush of adrenaline Harry had finally stopped feeling the pain.

Then the pain returned, too soon. He'd won the game, sure, and the team manager (a moody little man named Eos Pembrook who used to be a Seeker himself in his younger days of glory) loved him, though he wasn't sure about his team mates—the constant "Potter would win the game or die! Potter knows the meaning of sacrifice! Potter's a winner!" speech that prefaced every single training session after that day hadn't brought him any popularity points—but he felt nothing, no stir of joy or pride at the thought of winning. What he'd done to win, yes, that was a different matter, and he waited no longer than the next game to repeat the stunt. Mr. Pembrook had been ecstatic. The fans had been ecstatic. The papers even more so. Mrs. Weasley cried. Harry shrugged, looked down and said nothing.

**Back to the present moment…**

The sickness took hold of him so swiftly and violently that, hadn't he already reached the bathroom, he would've probably made a mess of his new carpet—not that he actually cared, he hadn't even wanted to buy one; decorating his flat seemed so pointless. Hermione and Ron were almost entirely responsible for the way his flat looked now ("That's not decorating, that's bloody furnishing, mate…"). It was decently inhabitable if not very stylish or particularly cosy. Harry would have contended himself to leave it as empty as possible… then, perhaps, his mind would have become as empty as well, no guilty thoughts and irrational yearnings to keep him awake at night.

Truth be told, perhaps Harry had one too many butterbeers, but quite unsurprisingly so (given the basically non-existent percent of alcohol in butterbeer) the only effect he'd managed to achieve, in addition to his already well-established headache, and apart from an overloaded bladder, was an upset stomach. At least the headache and the stomach were a distraction from... But no, he wouldn't think, wouldn't think, wouldn't think, wouldn't think about him. About Draco. Damn!

With the sheer perversity the subconscious possesses in such a high degree, the name emerged inside his mind just as he struggled not to think. Draco. And then it echoed. Draco, Draco, Draco. His head was spinning with it. Draco Malfoy, who was dead, had been dead for a year (minus approximately four hours) and Harry still didn't quite understand why.

"Fuck," he blurted before kneeling over the toilet bowl and throwing up, Draco's name ringing in his head with the blind fury of repressed thoughts.

As he sat on the cool floor, a foul taste in his mouth, Harry asked himself for the hundredth—no, thousandth—time the question. Why? Why had Malfoy—he was 'Malfoy' when Harry felt angry and 'Draco' when he felt guilty—chosen to die, as all appearances indicated, for him, for Harry? And for the thousandth time Harry told himself that Malfoy had been enough of a sick, twisted bastard to die the way he had precisely to make Harry lose his mind over it. And yet, yet, Harry wasn't content with telling himself this. And he felt as lost as he had been a year ago, when Draco's cold body had been lying in front of his eyes and he hadn't been able to understand.

At first, after the initial shock had worn out, Harry had been afraid that somehow Ron, Hermione, the people close to him would realise what had been going on between him and Draco. All the forbidden touching, kissing and screwing, everything that had felt so good and was so wrong. It dawned on him, not much later, that he was ashamed, petrified at what his friends' reactions might be. He'd never been ashamed of anything he had done in his life, before. But he wasn't the boy—no, not boy, because that word implied an innocence he didn't possess anymore, but he couldn't think of himself as a 'man' either—the person, then, he used to be. It also dawned to him that Draco died, for all appearances, to save his life and he shouldn't be ashamed.

He hadn't recognised the feeling of guilt initially, only to discover, all of the sudden, that he'd been craving the release from guilt more than anything else. He understood, however, that it was impossible, like many other things he craved for. Answers. Forgetfulness. Innocence. Sometimes he craved for death. Sometimes for Draco's skin that used to be so lovely, so soft and delicate, so easily bruising…

He felt guilty for many things, too.

For betraying everyone and wanting to die, when he should have been strong enough to fight.

(And he hated it was Draco he had to thank for not dying, for finding the strength—or had it been mere desperation?—to fight.)

For letting his own desires overwhelm him and consenting to Malfoy's twisted game.

(But it was Malfoy who died, in the end.)

For telling everybody he didn't know why Malfoy did what he did.

(But he didn't know, he really didn't know)

For suggesting, without blushing, that maybe Draco had finally lost his marbles. For not mourning him in front of them. For not mourning at all. For still hating him. For being so ashamed. For still wanting to feel Draco's skin under his palms, to crush his lips (which had never spoken to him other than words of disdain and insults) in a hungry kiss, to touch every inch of his body hard enough to leave bruises and then soft enough for the bruises not to hurt, to have him trembling underneath him, moaning with pleasure, to melt deep inside him, and then to lay still with his arms wrapped around him in the afterglow and forget about all else that existed.

There had been a time, a distant time, when Harry had none of those thoughts, he knew it, but simply couldn't remember how it felt like, not obsessing about Malfoy. Sometimes Harry had the strange impression that Malfoy ran in his blood like a drug (::Bastard, he'd probably always wanted precisely that!::), that his blood had been poisoned the first time Malfoy kissed him. And Harry should have drawn his wand and cursed Malfoy's sorry ass into oblivion then, but it had been already too late.

Harry decided he needed to go out and either get himself seriously drunk with something much stronger than butterbeer (which, being butterbeer didn't count at all) or, even better, to find someone willing to be shagged senseless for the rest of the night. Tonight, of all the nights, he was going to forget!

-o–#–O–#–o-

The stranger's eyes were dark like an absence and his lips glowed invitingly under the mesmerizing light coming from the dance floor. The long, black hair only accentuated the paleness and it gave him—for it was definitely a "him", Harry could follow the contours of the stranger's flat chest through the black, silk shirt, and still, if any doubt remained as to the stranger's gender, the way the tight and also black leather pants embraced his forms left no place for any—but still, the long, black hair gave him a most entrancing, feminine look.

Yet it was not the hair alone that created this almost surreal impression of femininity. The other looked no more older than Harry's own age and he had a delicate frame, although his body inspired seduction, rather than fragility. His eyebrows were very thin, elegantly ink-drawn lines above his unreadable eyes, and his lips, oh yes, his lips were definitely the most beautiful pair of lips Harry had ever seen.

Harry stared shamelessly at the stranger's lips, imagining how they might feel and taste. His glass was empty again, he was thirsty and he needed those lips on his own. Somewhere, in an obscure corner of his mind, a small, still awake part of Harry started to panic, because this wasn't like him at all, he'd never, ever in his life, done anything like this.

Like walking straight to the surreal stranger dressed in black and, without warning, placing a hand upon his chest, feeling the cold silk under his fingers before grabbing the soft material, then leaning forward into those lips and tasting, claiming, devouring without hesitation. And knowing without doubt that he wouldn't stop there because he was helplessly drunk with the other's scent. The stranger's eyes remained guarded, absorbing like two miniature black-holes even the tiny amount of light coming from the dancing stage, as he responded to Harry's hungry kiss.

"Let's make it worth remembering…," he whispered into Harry's ears as soon as their lips parted so softly that his breath didn't even brush Harry's skin, yet the words sounded as clear as spoken directly inside Harry's mind. His hand—long nails, painted in black… well, Harry, drunk as he was, could definitely see a pattern here—travelled along his neck, fingers finally lifting his chin and mouth descending upon his lower lip, tongue brushing against it hotly.

"…for both of us, my pretty, lonely boy."

As he finished uttering the words, the stranger stood up and pulled Harry to the dance floor. Harry let himself be dragged, losing himself to the beat. He didn't feel like talking, and, by the looks of it, neither did his dance partner. A club (and that club, in particular) wasn't the place for idle chitchat and soul bounding, anyway. And this was all about physical need and nothing more, and Harry made it very clear to the black-haired youth by wrapping his hands around him and aligning their bodies as they began to move to the hypnotic rhythm…

-o–#–O–#–o-

The chain of events leading to this moment had started some three hours ago, when a pretty much absent-minded Harry showered, dressed and closed the door of his flat with a dull thud. To be more accurate, it started with him remembering Draco, which caused him to shower, dress and close the door behind him with a dull thud, determined to devote the entire night to silencing his memories by delving, carefree and drunk, into the more or less forbidden pleasures of the flesh.

The night was cold and starless, and the streets were covered in snow, but Harry ignored the frost biting his cheeks as he hurried past half-deserted sidewalks. On occasions like this he usually Apparated at one nightclub or another, but tonight he felt he needed the physical effort of walking (or rather striding), so he forced his legs to keep up a rhythm that sent distracting jolts of pain through his muscles.

Unlike most wizards, Harry didn't discriminate between Muggle nightclubs and Wizarding ones, and Cardiff had a nice selection of both. His choice resided only in his mood and plans for the night. On nights he didn't feel like entertaining company and wanted to get inconspicuously drunk, he went to Muggle clubs, where no one knew him and he could order as many drinks as it would take to bring him under the table without reading the whole story in "Witch Weekly" or the morning edition of the "Prophet" or whatever.

When he wanted a good shag as a bonus to the drinking, well… then he went to Sprite Square, which was pretty much Cardiff's equivalent to Diagon Alley, with the entire variety of magic shops, a Gringotts subsidiary and—this 'and' being particularly important—the Wizarding nightclubs, where girls (and boys for the matter, though he'd declined the occasional offers so far) would gather around the famous Harry Potter like flies around honey. He would, in this case, probably read the whole story in the morning edition of the "Prophet", given that he was not only the defeater of Voldemort, but also one of the most successful under-twenty Seeker playing for a professional team. The eyes of the Wizarding World were upon him constantly. After all, witches and wizards loved nothing better than reading about Defeating Dark Lords and Quidditch, and Harry was a pro at both.

At first, Harry had indulged in his escapades with a certain pretence of secrecy about them, before discovering that having a secret night life was a virtual impossibility when your name happened to be "Harry Potter". His friends, at any rate, had found out about it from the newspapers in no time. Not about his name being "Harry Potter", naturally, but about how "lately, Harry Potter, the famous 'Boy Who Lived—Repeatedly', also new Quidditch sensation, seems to have developed a strong fondness for the company of attractive young witches and Hinkypunk Hazes (for details on ingredients and preparation open on page nine and read 'The Magic of Cocktails: Which One Stirs Your Night?', an article by the fabulous Nik Spoodgey)" and so on and so forth. He'd been angered by the insinuating tone of the article to such an extent that he considered switching from Hinkypunk Hazes to something even more harmful to one's health just to make a point, then decided not to for the very same reason. He wasn't going to care anymore. They could write whatever they wanted.

The 'new Harry' had come as a shock to both Ron and Hermione. They'd imagined he would keep locking himself up in his under-furnished flat and refuse any contact with the outer world for the rest of his life, a misapprehension for which Harry couldn't really blame them because he'd worked very hard to leave this precise impression.

Well, sometimes things just turned out in the worst possible way.

He finally arrived at the Love Spelled, his destination for the night, at about ten o'clock. The club was quite the flashy scene, from the neon pink sign hanging above the front door to the disturbingly colourful interior, but Harry liked it for a number of reasons. The music was nice. The drinks were good. The company never lacked.

Ten o'clock in the evening, however, was too early an hour for the customary madness to have unleashed properly. The club was only half-crowded with noisy witches and wizards, most of them scanning the place for potential one-night stands. It would be senseless drinking and shagging tonight, Harry had decided, and the the Spelled was the perfect place to seek both.

He strode to the bar, ordered his favourite drink and scowled at the bartender who didn't seem able to avert his gaze from his scar. He wanted to shout "Yes, it's me Harry-Bloody-Potter and I'm here to get fucking drunk, do you have a problem with it?", but then the bartender finally served him, and it did seem a rather sorry waste of his vocal capacities.

Despite the urge to forget himself and the world, Harry emptied his glass with small, slow sips, revelling in the burning sensation the alcohol sent down his throat. Another song started—Muggle singer or band by the sound of it, although he couldn't have explained just how he'd guessed it. The Spelled was the only Wizarding club Harry knew which played Muggle music as well as Wizard bands. The new song was pretty good—was, in fact, so good that it reminded Harry just how miserable his life had been lately.

His vision was already starting to become a bit unfocused, like when he'd still been wearing his glasses and had to take them down for a reason or another. He had renounced his glasses about six month ago (he had to have his eyes magically repaired after agreeing to play for the Catapults), just like he had renounced many other things and learned to live with many more that made life much easier to stand. Like drinking. Drinking definitely made life so much easier to stand, though Harry never drank during daytime and very seldom in the company of his friends or acquaintances. He hated to let them see how low he had sunk and he didn't trust himself to keep silent about Draco after the alcohol would have chased away the sanity.

Well, he'd come here to seek some way of silencing his thoughts and was ready to take it as far as it would go.

"Another Hinky Haze," Harry ordered. "Double," he added as an afterthought. Reputedly, the right quantity of 'Haze' made Hinkypunk lights dance in front of your eyes. Harry was yet to test the truth behind this claim.

Being Harry Potter was highly overrated, he decided as the alcohol burned down his throat. His life was nothing special, well, that was if you didn't count it being a living hell.

A couple of hours later…

…But if all demons looked like the beautiful stranger in his arms, Harry was rather content with the way his hell had turned out after all.

"Why don't we take this somewhere more private, love?"

It was lucky that Harry was positively drunk when his dance partner's words (strangely how a mere whisper sounded so clear inside his mind, with all the noise) brought to his attention that they were standing in the middle of the dance floor and all eyes were on them.

Harry suddenly understood why. It was lucky indeed that he was so intoxicated. Instead of wishing for the earth to split open and suck him in, Harry blinked, then thought he'd rather be sucked by the pretty youth in his arms, an idea which under any other circumstances would have elicited at least a blush from Harry's part, but he was so far and wonderfully gone that he only started to chuckle.

He was in fact so far and wonderfully gone that he hadn't realized until then he'd unbuttoned his dance partner's shirt completely and his right hand was currently resting inside the other's pants.

Oh, whoops.

The newspapers would be writing about this faster than he could utter "Snitch". It was precisely the juicy piece of gossip the Wizarding World loved to read about him. He could almost see the bold, mocking letters of the headlines.

::Harry Potter Does Boys::

Better still…

::Potter And His Naughty Broom::

Or, perhaps…

::Caerphilly Seeker… Catapulted To The 'Other Team'?::

Or whatever. They could probably do ten times better.

During the last six months, he hadn't given the papers the tiniest hint that he swung the other way too. He'd gotten involved mainly with girls partly because he had been terrified to face the monster that was public opinion, and partly because, unconsciously or not, he chose his lovers as to remind him as little as possible of Draco. There had been that Muggle boy though, all blonde hair and pale face and Harry still couldn't think about him without a tinge of remorse… but that was beside the point and, anyway, the papers had never found out about him.

"Let's get out of here," he giggled into the other young man's ear, and pulled him into a very sloppy kiss for the sake of the audience before interweaving their fingers and dragging him to the exit.

Let them write what they wanted about him. To his surprise, Harry found out that tonight he didn't give a damn about newspapers.

After they'd Apparated right in front of his flat (Harry conveniently ignoring the risk of being spotted by one of his Muggle neighbours) he fumbled with the keys, trying to get the door to open as quickly as possible while simultaneously cursing himself for choosing to lock it the Muggle way rather than using a Locking Spell… for a reason that was decidedly blurry at the moment, but then most things would be after the number 'Hazes' he'd ordered (on a side note, no Hinkypunk lights yet). It didn't help in the slightest that his latest conquest was hungrily sucking his way up to Harry's earlobe.

Harry wasn't too sure about how they managed to make it to the bed after he finally opened the door, but didn't spend too much time wondering since there were other more interesting things on his mind at the moment.

Like taking all the close off the beautiful stranger, for a start.

After accomplishing the task, Harry noted with a mixture of admiration and lust that the other youth was just as breathtaking nude, as he was clothed, if not more so. Smooth, hairless skin, begging to be kissed and bruised, and Harry suddenly and inexplicably felt like he could never have enough of it.

"You're over-dressed, beautiful," his lover whispered seductively into Harry's ear.

Harry giggled before he could stop himself. He liked the sound of that; as it appeared, other parts of him also did. No one had called him 'beautiful' before and it never occurred to him that he was particularly so. While pondering this particular aspect, he was being pushed slowly onto the bed and straddled, and his shirt was being unbuttoned with swift movements. By the time his lover was tugging at his pants, Harry came to the conclusion that he was completely mesmerised.

And when the other licked a perfect, hot circle around Harry's navel, Harry thought he would die of too much pleasure.

"Anything for you tonight, darling," the long-haired youth purred, lifting his face only slightly to gaze into Harry's unfocused eyes. "So what will it be?"

-o–#–O–#–o-

They ended up doing quite a lot of things, after Harry discovered he had trouble deciding, and his lover had been more than eager to help him make up his mind. The fleeting thought passed Harry's mind that he might be sore in a lot of unexpected places come morning.

"So what's your name? You already know mine," Harry observed in a soft voice. They were still entangled in Harry's sheets, and the room was still full of heat.

The stranger laughed.

"I don't have a name."

Harry suddenly felt cold inside, despite all the hot air surrounding him. There was something about those words, something he couldn't quite remember in the haze of drinking and getting laid, something about black eyes on a pale face that didn't belong there, and about deception, and death. The stranger laughed again, and climbed down from the bed this time, starting to dress. Harry was a bit disappointed, but then that was what he'd wanted. A non-confusing one-night stand.

"I don't have a name," the other youth repeated, and then continued just like he was reading Harry's earlier thoughts. "Not tonight, anyway. But neither do I have a wish to hurt you, love. If you must know me by some title, I am the Keeper."

In Harry's mind, the word "Keeper" equated with only one thing and that was Quidditch.

"You play for a team, then?" he asked in confusion. The other most definitely didn't have a keeper's constitution.

The stranger laughed for a third time.

"My sweet, silly boy, you have so much to learn." Harry was beginning to get annoyed with being called 'boy', and on top of it 'silly', by someone who didn't look much past his own age, but he was only five minutes after the most intense, not to mention instructive, sexual experience in his not-so-long life, so he figured he wouldn't complain just yet.

"But there will be time enough after you'll receive It," his bed partner continued, puzzling him further more. "I am the Keeper of your gift, precious."

"Gift?"

"This." A book in black covers materialised out of nowhere into the stranger's left hand. "This is your gift. The Book."

"You're giving me… a book," Harry noted, even more confused than before. "We've just shagged and you're giving me a book!?"

"Not just any book." The stranger rolled eyes. "The Book. And consider myself a part of your gift, if you like. The purpose for which I sought you was, however, to bring the Book to Its new master. To you."

"You sought me? I practically jumped you in that club! And what do you mean-"

"You came to me… Harry, love," the other interrupted him, "because I wanted you to. I had to bring the Book to you. It desired to come to you, after the last Chosen died, though It took a whole year to decide this time. "

"This is nonsense! Who was the last, erm, Chosen then?"

"Oh, the Book will let you know at the right time, but it doesn't matter anymore. It's yours now, and it will take the shape of your deepest thoughts and desires…" He was purring seductively again. "If you let It."

Harry stared incredulously.

"I'm afraid I have to leave now. But I won't forget you, my pretty. I can still taste you." He licked his lips slowly, causing heat to rise into Harry's face. "Lovely. Anyway, just remember this, the Book is yours and yours alone. For any other who touches It, It will remain blank and voiceless. It might even hurt them if It feels like it." He waved his hand dismissively. "You'll figure all the nasty details 'cause you're a bright boy."

Harry stared at the book, preparing to say he'd been over bedtime stories for quite some time now. He didn't, however, get the chance, because as soon as he lifted his gaze from the book, he noticed the weird stranger was gone faster than one could say 'Disapparate' and there wasn't anything mysterious about it, it was just incredibly rude. Harry felt used and dirty. The thought that only a couple of hours ago he'd been rather excited at the prospect of feeling used and dirty was none too comforting either.

He also felt strangely empty, like a deserted house. Thoughts of Draco menaced to return any time now, along with the almost ever present guilt and shame.

For lack of a better idea, he took the book in his hands. Its appearance was deceiving. It was heavier than it looked, its dark covers smoother than they should have been, and it stubbornly refused to open. Harry experienced the sudden painful urge to rip it open. And then the Voice hissed inside his head for the first time.

::Ripping me would be rather extreme, young Masster. Just asssk nicely…::

Harry dropped the book instantly and looked around suspiciously, reaching for his wand. There was no one else in the room. Maybe he was finally going crazy. As Ron had once put it, hearing voices wasn't a good sign, even in the Wizarding World.

The Voice chuckled.

::You're not going crazy, young Master. You have to ask me to open. Asssk.::

Still suspicious, Harry picked up the book again.

"Open."

His voice had been nothing but a faint whisper, but the book blossomed in his hands like an exotic flower, pages resembling black petals crawling over his hands invitingly. The letters, which Harry recognised as such only after several moments of curious study, were glowing red and formed intricate patterns. He couldn't help but stare.

Slowly, the letters started to fall into words and words pieced up sentences. It was a poem, Harry realised, a very strange one, which could have been mistaken for a love poem, only it was also about dying without really dying, and its blood-like letters held promises beyond any imagination and comforting words, both seducing and deceiving.

He suddenly longed to touch the glowing pattern, and he did just that, not surprised to find it pulsating under his fingers.

::My Chosen:: The Voice purred inside his head now. ::Glad to finally meet you.::

::What are you?:: Harry asked without opening his mouth.

::My Keeper has told you that already, now, hasn't he? I'm your gift, my Master. Modesty aside, I'm The Gift.::

Harry didn't reply, but he must've been sending some kind of incredulous vibes because the Voice added, seductively,

::I can give you all your heart desires.::

::Erm… Why?:: It was a justified question, wasn't it?

::Oh. Nobody asked that before.:: The Voice sounded a bit dubious. ::Well, because it's my purpose, I suppose. I exist for it and by it. Long, long time ago, a young wizard just like you poured his soul into me and I gave him everything. Now, I will give you everything. Tell me, young Master Harry. Tell me, what does your heart desire? What wishes do you have?::

::I don't have any.::

But just as he thought it, Harry knew he was lying. Before he could stop himself, Draco's image flashed through his mind, like he'd seen the other boy before leaving his room after their first and only night together—asleep, pale in the moonlight and only half covered with the blanket, a purple mark forming on his shoulder where Harry had bitten him in the heat of the moment.

::Pretty. And dead,:: the Voice echoed into his head.

::Shut up!:: Harry snapped angrily.

::Everything, my Chosen. I mean it. You don't know how beautiful it can be to have it, to have the power. It's in yourself. You can't deny it. Or, you could, but it will serve you precisely for nothing.::

Harry shivered. He also found himself desperately aching for something to drink.

::Ah, the proverbial thirst for power…:: Harry could have sworn the Voice cackled malevolently inside his mind.

::Unfortunately, no liquid will quench it, my Chosen. I came to you because you can wield power, my Master. Because you're light and darkness alike, and yet you're neither. You've tasted them both, and none has claimed you completely.::

Harry could almost feel the hunger behind the words pulsing into his mind. Maybe he was paranoid, but for a second he thought the Voice was hungry for his soul. The knowledge left him indifferent.

::I don't suppose you could turn back time,:: he frowned bitterly.

::You don't really want to go back, young Master, do you now? You want him here. Now.::

::No! Stop doing this!::

Harry's heart started pounding. He suddenly had a bad feeling about the Book. Its Voice inside his head made him queasy. But, It couldn't possibly mean that… Because Draco was dead and death was permanent.

::You can't deny it. You want him. Stop fighting me,:: the Voice continued to tempt him. ::It will be only the beginning. I can give you a power beyond your dreams. You only dream of him now. I could make your dreams have no limits, and then make them come true—::

::Shut up! SHUT UP!::

"SHUT UP!!!" Harry finally screamed in loud voice, panting, throwing the book into the opposite wall, watching it fall down and close.

And then there was only silence. He climbed down from his bed and picked the Book from the floor reluctantly, like it was poisonous and would bite—which It could, for all he knew. He looked around the room, hesitating a little, before walking to the wardrobe and tossing It inside the closest drawer, burying It completely under a disorganised pile of socks.

He ran out of the bedroom, his throat very dry and in desperate need for a glass of water. After quenching his thirst, he suddenly felt very tired, but he didn't want to go back into the same room with the Book. He sat on the floor, hugging his knees like he used to do when he was a little boy and still lived inside his much hated cupboard and things weren't at all complicated, and before he realised it, sleep claimed him, heavy and demanding.

End of Chapter One


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Scandal

-o–#–O–#–o-

"Today the headlines, tomorrow hard times..."

(Queen, "Scandal")

-o–#–O–#–o-

"Harry...

"Harry!...

"Harry!!!"

There was a voice, and the voice was calling his name.

"Harry, come on, you scare me. Wake up!"

The voice belonged to Hermione Granger. Harry hadn't seen her since Christmas, which they'd both spent at the Burrow.

He finally opened his eyes. He was inside his flat, that much was clear although he couldn't remember the precise moment when he'd unlocked the door and stumbled in. Hermione, hair falling in her face, was looking down at him—Harry noticed he'd fallen asleep on the floor and, by the looks of it, he'd slept all day long, the sun having set yet again upon this meaningless world. Hermione's worried expression changed into a more severe one as he stood up, swayed a little and crashed into the sofa.

"Is–is this true, Harry?"

The latest edition of "Witch Weekly" landed in his lap.

"Bollocks," Harry uttered in a dispassionate voice, as one would remark on weather during a tea-time conversation. Memories of the previous night came rushing back. His head felt heavy and his mouth sour. He didn't have the energy to display any kind of emotion. Hermione gratified him with a scowl.

"I'll take that as a 'yes' although the photo speaks for itself well enough."

The photo in question depicted Harry in an undeniably compromising position—specifically, very heatedly entangled on the dance floor with the stranger dressed in black he'd seduced (or been seduced by, if Harry was to believe him) the previous night. They'd put up quite a show, he remembered, of the particular variety of shows that no decent parent would allow their children to watch. He also remembered not caring right then, but he did now—stupid, idiotic bad luck!

"The 'Prophet' also printed an article, but you didn't make the front page there," said Hermione. "I don't receive that Quidditch magazine, what's-its-name, but they're bound to at least mention it with all the attention you've been getting of late. 'Transfiguration Today' is probably not interested and 'The Quibbler' refrained from writing anything. You'll have to buy Luna Lovegood a very nice present some day, Harry."

Harry didn't pay much attention to his friend's words, too busy staring at the picture in front of his eyes and frowning. The Harry in the photo was in fact alternating between groping the other youth and hiding behind him. All in all, Harry thought it was a pretty good shot, considering he hadn't been aware of it being taken. They'd never photographed him with girls, and Merlin knew, there had been plenty of opportunities! In big, purple, curly letters, the headline announced: "Harry Potter and the Surprise of the Century"

Come to think about it, Hermione took 'the surprise of the century' rather well. Harry felt an immense and also inexplicable sense of relief washing through him. Which was why the words that left his lips seemingly of their own accord took Harry by surprise because they did a great job of completely obscuring the relief he felt.

"Yeah, so me and pretty boy in the photo have done the deed. Do you have a problem with that?" he said—in a cold, detached tone, too.

::I'm so obsessed with Malfoy I'm turning into him,:: Harry thought grimly. To her credit, Hermione didn't even blink. She did blush a little, however.

"No, Harry, I don't have a problem with that."

Well, if she didn't have a problem with that... What the hell was that disapproving frown on her face about? Harry was confused, which wasn't exactly the best choice when dealing with a vicious hangover.

"I don't care if you feel like experimenting a little with boys—"

"It's not—" Harry started to protest, but Hermione waved her hands impatiently, cutting his words.

"All right, it's not experimenting," she finished his words. "I'm sorry, Harry. It was an unnecessary comment. What I do care about, though, is what you do to yourself."

Her voice was softening and Harry experienced again the sensation of relief, which, again, failed to explain why his only visible reaction to Hermione's words was a scowl.

"It's not the first time you do it, Harry. Only, before, there used to be those unfortunate girls," Hermione continued. Her grimace blatantly indicated she thought those girls to be a number of things, none of which 'unfortunate'. "I can't understand it, Harry. All this time–"

She sighed and allowed herself to slip beside him on the sofa.

"I'm alone too, you know."

Her words surprised Harry a little. What about her and Ron, then? He thought they had something going on. It suddenly hit him he didn't know much about his friends' lives anymore.

"But why, Harry? Why are you so keen on self-destructing? He's gone, for good," for a fleeting moment, Harry thought she talked about Draco and felt an acute pang of panic in his stomach, "Voldemort is gone, you killed him for good this time. You can start living again."

"In case you haven't noticed, I am living." Harry pointed at the photo in the newspaper, curling his eyebrows in a bitter frown.

"But you're not happy, you're not even content. Harry, I don't remember seeing you laugh since Sirius died."

"Maybe I discovered life wasn't that funny, after all."

"There you go, cynical again. And you avoid us, myself and Ron. On Christmas you acted like a zombie, and trust me, I've actually seen a zombie and I'd know. Even the twins asked what was wrong with you—twice. You're miserable and you're wasting yourself in one-night stands, and drinking, and sleepless nights, and simply not-caring. I honestly don't know how you keep up with your team's practice sessions. You dare fate, Harry, just like every time you take one of those suicidal dives of yours for the Snitch. There's a more dangerous dive you're taking here, and I see no Snitch to be caught at the end of it. I just don't understand, why have things turned out this way for the three of us?"

Harry avoided to answer in the usual way one avoids answering a question, which is by asking another.

"Has Ron seen it yet?"

"He doesn't get the "Witch", you know that."

"But... Ginny, or Mrs. Weasley might. Or he could find out at work."

"Well, it's weekend and, as we both know, Ron mostly sleeps on weekends."

"I don't want Ron to know, Hermione."

"Harry... It's not that bad. He's your best friend, he won't forsake you, no matter what, and you can't hide this from him forever."

Harry shook his head stubbornly.

"I can't tell Ron."

"Why?"

::Because of Malfoy!:: Harry wanted to scream. ::Because none of you could understand, that's why. Because Ron would hate me.::

Because Harry might have been able to hide everything from Hermione, but he wasn't so sure about hiding it from Ron.

::I would tell him about Draco, and Ron would hate me. And I don't need this, not when he is dead anyway. He's dead and I just feel like 'wasting' myself too, Hermione...::

Though, had Draco lived through the madness, it might have not made any difference in the end. Perhaps Draco would have destroyed Harry as surely as he was doing himself at the moment. Perhaps Harry would've enjoyed being destroyed then.

"I can't tell you why, Hermione. Please, just let it go for now."

::For ever.::

"That's what you said about those midnight strolls you went on alone when we were still at Hogwarts," she pointed out, looking at Harry as she was trying to see inside his mind. Hermione was so perceptive at times it was uncanny.

"'I can't tell you,'" she quoted his words from back then. "What stopped you? What stops you now, Harry?"

"I thought you'd have forgotten about that by now," Harry observed with a gloomy countenance.

"Harry. Look at me," she said, forcing him to lift his gaze. "I remember things like the dates of goblin rebellions and what colour a Shrinking Solution turns if you add too much leech juice in it. You're more important to me than all the dates and potions in the world, Harry. "

Hermione didn't say anymore. Her gaze softened with weariness, as she stood up in front of her friend, looking as she was ready to extend her hand to soothe his own weariness. But she didn't.

"Whatever burden you bare, Harry, I'm sorry you can't share it with us. Maybe some day... Anyway, I guess I should go now. I have to wake up early tomorrow. Just... rest a bit, okay? No wild escapades tonight, promise?"

Harry nodded, not really wanting to speak any more, and Hermione walked to the kitchen to Floo herself out of Harry's flat without a glance back. It was her way of telling him she wouldn't bother him again about his private life, if that was Harry's wish—a fact which Harry appreciated at its right value, knowing just how un-Hermione-like was for his former schoolmate to leave a question unanswered.

Her words echoed inside his head, most of them devoid of meaning, like a track playing in the background which you hear but not actually listen to.

::Whatever burden you bare...::

And Harry realised to his horror that he wanted to bare the burden that was the memory of Draco Malfoy. It was all he'd got left. Draco's memory would always stay with him, and little did it matter if Harry liked it or not. More likely not. Bloody Malfoy, even dead he was a nuisance!

To his surprise, Harry felt tears rolling down his cheeks, his chest ripped apart with violent shaking. Why had his body chosen this particular moment to break after a whole year of numbness, he wouldn't have been able to tell, even if in a proper state of mind. So he let the tears fall unhindered. It didn't make him feel any better, it didn't help in the slightest—as they said crying helped lifting the weight from one's soul—and he felt stupid for breaking like that, but he knew he needed to cry, just this once, and so he did.

-o–#–O–#–o-

After finally crawling to bed the other night and crashing in, he'd woken up early—too early—with an undefined feeling of anxiety gnawing at his chest. The dreams had been particularly vivid that night, and even if he couldn't remember the details, he knew what—or rather who—they had been about. Draco. His dreams were always about Draco. Only this time, there had also been the Book, Its presence burning inside him, promising, tempting.

Around eight o'clock, an owl arrived from his team manager, inviting Harry to "dispatch his lazy arse at the Headquarters a.s.a.p."

Consequently, at half past eight Harry was standing in front of a shabby looking door, upon which the letters 'E s e bro k' still hanged undauntedly—the door to Mr. Eos Pembrook's office, more commonly known among his players as the "Headquarters". Harry knocked politely and braced himself.

"That better be you, Potter!!!" The angry words erupted from inside the office as the door burst open, hitting the wall violently.

"Good morning, boss," Harry uttered, as he stepped inside.

"Quite the contrary, Potter, quite the contrary. If this morning seems good to you, it'll very soon turn to, pardon my language, 'Griffshit. You have three guesses." The little man stuck three bony fingers into Harry's face.

"Erm," Harry shrugged, "they cancelled the Cup this year?..."

"Don't play the innocent fool with me, Potter. Not that it'll help you, but I want a very good explanation for this and I want it now!"

A copy of "Witch Weekly" hit Harry hard on the chest. His hands snapped reflexively to catch it, but he didn't bother to give it more than a cursory look.

"Well, say something Potter! Anything! That it hadn't been you! That it's a fake! That you have a queer twin no one knows about because you keep it locked inside your wardrobe!"

"I didn't know you read the 'Witch', boss," Harry replied in a dry tone.

"Potter."

"And I'm not technically gay," Harry felt compelled to point out. "I've slept with plenty of girls too, so I'd know."

"BO-LLOCKS! Don't give me this shit now, Potter! Do you have you any idea about what this means?" He pointed to the newspaper. "They'll eat us alive! Our team will become the laughing stock of all those bloody gossipers faster than you can say 'broomstick'! All because you couldn't keep your 'broomstick' in check!"

"I thought you always said publicity, bad or not, was always good for the team, boss."

"Publicity, Potter? Pu-bli-ci-ty!!? This--" nervous pointing at the newspaper again "--is a bloody scandal! They'll eat us alive, I'm telling you."

"With all the respect, whom I choose to fuck is my business and mine alone! It had nothing to do with Quidditch or the team!" Of course, Harry knew he was wrong.

"Stop being so naïve, Potter! In the world I live, which is also the world you live in, it's everybody's business if everyone's favourite Golden Boy turns out to be enjoying other boys' company too much."

There was a knock at the door. Instead of opening it, Mr. Pembrook magic-ed it close.

"That must be them. I'm amazed they haven't been here earlier, the gargoyles! They must be dying to get their hands on you and start pouring questions. You know, Potter, you should be very grateful that lady friend of yours placed the Fidelius Charm on your flat, or they'd have gotten their claws into you by now."

The knocking started again, more impatient this time.

"It's really your choice, Potter! It not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So do you want to face them now or later?"

"Pembrook, we know you are inside! Open up, we only want to ask a couple of questions," came a shrill voice from the other side of the locked door.

"I don't need this shit now, boss!" Harry scowled in the direction of the door.

"Thought so myself, my boy. Well, then, let's continue this conversation in your flat."

The little man's head tilted to Harry's left, in the direction of a dusty fireplace. Harry took the hint, along with a handful of Floo powder and, next moment, he was standing in the middle of his kitchen, cleaning the ashes from his clothes.

Mr. Pembrook followed suit in no time. He'd been into Harry's flat only once before, right after the young man had moved in. It had been Mr. Pembrook's responsibility as a manager to check with Harry that everything was all right and that his Seeker was satisfied with the arrangements.

"Not very busy decorating, eh, Potter?"

Harry's kitchen furniture consisted, apart from the fireplace and the sink, which had come with the flat, of a medium-sized table with no table-cloth on it, a pair of wooden chairs and a very large fridge. Dishes and assorted cutlery were piled on top of it.

"I don't need more," he replied flatly.

Mr. Pembrook seemed to find the fridge more interesting than Harry's answer.

"Is it one of those boxes Muggle use for storing food?..."

Harry tried to chase away the exasperated look which, he felt, was creeping on his face. Mr. Pembrook must have caught some of it, though, because he coughed and tore his gaze away from the fridge.

"Right, right, Potter. Back to business."

Harry sighed and led Mr. Pembrook into the living-room, motioning him to sit on the sofa, while he took the armchair. His living room was in a slightly better state of furnishing than the kitchen, and only Ron and Hermione knew how much they deserved a prize for that. It was, however, a lot messier, with empty bottles and clothes lying on the carpet, and Mr. Pembrook couldn't help noticing the remains of the Snitch-clock, but thought better than mentioning it.

"Listen, Potter. I'm not going to pester you any more about the Incident." Mr. Pembrook had a tendency to capitalize words in an ominous manner as he was speaking. "What's done is done. All we have to worry no is how the hell are we going to come out of it as nice and good as possible."

"So you don't want me to leave the team, then?" Harry's voice was emotionless.

"Don't be daft! No, I don't want you to leave the team, Potter. You're the bloody best Seeker we've had in decades and you know it. But the team will be a problem."

"How's so?"

"How blind are you, boy? Your not exactly popular among your fellow players, not that you've been exactly trying. They've been reasonably civil towards you till now, because you kept winning the matches. But the age of nicety is over. Gone. Finished. I know them well enough to tell. The ladies might take it a tad better, but the rest of the pricks, starting with Anderson, will resent you heavily for the Incident."

"I'm part of the team, whether they like it or not."

"Exactly, Potter. Everything you do reflects on them. I might be wrong, but with the little stunt you pulled, the gargoyles will start hunting them too. Start to ask awkward questions. Make up stories about them."

"You don't imply that because I slept with a guy, the papers will suggest the rest of the team does it as well on a constant basis. Except Woodring, they're all married, for pity's sake! With women. It's not like we have bloody orgies going on in that locker room!"

"First of all, Potter, you did not sleep with anyone. They only have one photo of you and that bloke making out and, as far as they're concerned, it's the only thing that happened. Secondly, yes, that's precisely what I imply. And thirdly, if you ever utter the words 'orgies' and 'locker room' in the same sentence again, I'll personally nail you to a goal post."

Harry shrugged.

"Don't give me that damned I-don't-give-a-fuck shrug of yours, Potter!"

Before he could stop himself, Harry shrugged again. Mr. Pembrook gave him a disapproving look and Harry sighed and briefly closed his eyes before speaking.

"What do you want me to do, then?"

"Several things, actually," Mr. Pembrook replied promptly, in the voice he used to explain game strategies.

Harry looked at him expectantly.

"They'll probably start picking on you, make dirty jokes, call you names and crap like that. Don't listen, don't answer, don't fight back. It's that simple, Potter. If it becomes too much, come directly to me. Things are bound to settle down in time. Oh, and Potter... No more showering in common."

"Excuse me?"

"Erm, you heard me. It's bad enough they are convinced you've been gawking at their arses all this time. No need to make things more awkward."

"I have not been--" Harry started in an angry voice. He didn't even use the showers at the stadium that often. What was the point, when there was a nice, deserted alley only five minutes away from his flat where he could Apparate unseen and unheard by Muggles and then hurry home? But it was the point that mattered.

"Well, that's not my business anyway," Mr. Pembrook interrupted, looking reasonably embarrassed.

"So what do you want me to do? Shower with the girls?"

"Don't be daft, Potter! You can shower at your own place. Here. Look, it's for your own good, boy."

Mr. Pembrook stood up.

"I'm going now, Potter. Guess I'll have to face them gargoyles sooner or later, and it'd better be sooner. I'll tell them that you drank too much and lost it a bit, and that's all."

"And you expect them to buy it?"

"Of course not, Potter! But I expect them to bit their nails in frustration. You rest well today boy, 'cause tomorrow it'll be practice again."

::Oh, yes,:: Harry thought, ::and what a joy.::

-o–#–O–#–o-

The world was slowly melting away. Warm rain, highly unusual for that time of the year, was pouring from the dark sky, digging sharp holes into the snow, washing the whiteness away, blurring the windows, but then Harry's whole life was nothing but a blur right now.

It was still morning and still early when Mr. Pembrook left his flat and Harry found himself facing another day confined between the walls of his so-called home. He'd never felt so trapped before. He'd never experienced the urge to go out and roam the streets during daytime before. Just because right then he couldn't do it, roaming the streets was very, very appealing. In the end, he went to his bedroom and swallowed a full dose of Sleeping Draught.

He woke up from his self-induced sleep with a start , late in the afternoon. Something didn't feel right. He could barely breathe and the walls of his room were closing over him. He'd never suffered from claustrophobia (a decade spent inside a cupboard pretty much kicks claustrophobia out of the equation), yet his bedroom was shrinking to the dimensions of a drawer around him—a very dark, very crammed drawer.

And a voice kept whispering inside his head.

Among the growing panic, he finally understood. The Evil Book. How could've he forgotten about It.

Harry stood up, walked on unsteady legs to his wardrobe and retrieved the Book from the drawer he'd confined it to the previous night. The claustrophobic sensation dissipated in an instant.

::Thank you, Master. It was getting rather hard to breathe in there.::

::You're an Evil Book. You don't 'breathe',:: Harry thought at It flatly.

::I was speaking metaphorically, my Chosen. And you're clearly prejudiced against me because I have black pages and ominously looking, blood-coloured letters, and I can read your mind.::

::What...!?::

::You've just called me 'Evil', my Master.::

Harry was taken aback, but didn't let it show.

::I can't believe this. Next you'll be telling me I hurt your feelings.::

::It was very cruel of you, my Chosen, very heartless indeed,:: the Voice whined inside Harry's head.

::Don't expect apologies.::

::No, of course not. I'm yours to do what you want with me, my young Master. It's a job of many hazards and few satisfactions,:: It sighed, a bit dramatically in Harry's opinion.

::So I could set you on fire then?::

Harry could have sworn that the Book shivered in his hands at the threat.

::You need me, my Chosen. I wish you wouldn't deny it anymore.::

::Well, I wish you'd shut up. Funny how we don't always get what we want, isn't it?::

::They despise you know, Master. The very same people who used to adore you.::

::Yeah. Maybe they do. I thought I told you to—shut—the—fuck—up—Book!:: It was becoming too much to take. He didn't need reminding about things he knew so well himself. And when did it get so dark?

The Voice refused to yield.

::They're so disgusted and appalled, them in their self-righteous 'normality'.:: The words were pouring like venom into Harry's thoughts. ::You could make them suffer for it. You could make them repent and beg for your forgiveness. I can give you that.::

The Voice was stupid to insist like that. Harry was too weary to be tempted by revenge. He simply didn't have the energy for it.

::Not interested, I told you. I've spent seven years of my life trying to rid the world of a crazed maniac and now that he's finally gone I don't fancy turning into him.::

Which wasn't entirely true, because in the end he'd given up trying—rather ironic that he'd succeeded despite it. There was a moment of silence inside his head and Harry was beginning to hope he'd made his point clear, when the Voice continued undeterred.

::They have no right to judge you, my Chosen. And I understand better than you imagine. I can see what they've put you through your entire life. What you've been forced to do, become and what you've been denied.::

::Well, it's not like we can always make our own choices. Life doesn't work like that.:: It had been a hard lesson, but Harry had learned it in the end. ::But what would you know, you're just a book.::

The Book ignored the insult.

::It could work like that for you, my Chosen. Just say the words.::

::No.::

The Voice changed tactic.

::You don't want power over them, but why should you be denied everything? You've got nothing to lose now, Master. It wouldn't make any difference in their eyes.::

::I still have friends.:: But the thought had been uncertain, wavering, and the Book apparently sensed it.

::They don't understand you like I do. Neither can they help you. They can't soothe the ache.::

A wave of cold swept through him and he could sense darkness everywhere. In his room, in himself.

::Neither can you.:: He wouldn't give in.

::Ah, but he can. You still remember. It torments you, both the memory of having him and the knowledge you can't have him anymore.::

It was strange how the darkness became less menacing all of the sudden and more comforting.

::I can survive. I've managed this far.::

::You need him, my Chosen, my Master. It's not fair to deny it to yourself. Not for them. Not because you try to be their perfect little hero,:: the Voice chanted maliciously.

::I've never really tried that. It just sort of came along the way,:: Harry protested, albeit weakly.

::And you hated it. But to him, you where no hero. You needed him back then.::

::He tricked me into it. A low, vile trick just worthy of a Malfoy.::

::But it didn't change too much, did it?::

::It changed everything.::

::It set you free, my Master. The real you. Your body knows it. It aches for him.::

::You're talking crap, Book. There was and there is just one me. And I'm not bloody perfect, and if my body has this kind of needs, there are many others to satisfy them! Malfoy isn't the only one!::

He slammed the Book into the floor and left it to lie there. He walked into the bathroom and put his head under an invigorating jet of cold water. He was already on his way to the kitchen when the characteristic thud announced him that someone had just Floo-ed into his fireplace. It wasn't that hard to guess who. Only a handful of people were able to Floo into his flat, and he had a suspicion it wouldn't be Hermione or Mr. Pembrook again. His stomach did a nervous twist as he entered the kitchen.

"'S up, mate?" Ron's voice happily greeted him from amidst a blur of ashes. "Beside every speck of ash in your fireplace, I mean."

"Ron. Um, hi..."

Harry acknowledged his best friend's presence with a wary gaze. Ron looked his usual cheerful self and Harry almost let out a sigh of relief, which would have been a bit difficult to explain. Against all odds, his friend hadn't seen the article yet.

"What are you doing here?" he inquired, still a bit apprehensive.

"Well, Hermione dropped by earlier and made me promise I'd come to see you." Ron made a funny face. "Said you were feeling down or something."

"I'm fine, thanks," Harry replied, a bit more sharp than he'd intended.

"Your hair's dripping," Ron needlessly pointed out. Harry shrugged.

"Right. Er, I told her, we all get bit depressed after the winter holidays," the redhead continued. "She rolled her eyes at me, you know, like she used to do all the time in school. And then, I thought, we barely see each other now, with your practice sessions and my job and all..."

"How're things going at the Ministry?"

Ron turned up his nose involuntarily at the mention of the Ministry.

"Better not ask. I'm thinking 'bout leaving. Fred and George reckon they'll need some help with their shop now that they're expanding. It's just that Mum will probably throw a fit." The redhead rolled his eyes. "No respectable enough, she'll say. Dad's all right with it, I guess. I'm still working on a how to break the news to Mum."

As Harry watched his friend going on and on cheerfully about his family, he suddenly realised he'd missed Ron.

"I'm glad you came, Ron."

Ron looked a bit taken aback by this sudden display of sincerity. He'd become so used to a withdrawn Harry lately that he was at a lack of words first.

"Everything all right there, mate?" he inquired eventually, feeling stupid for asking.

"Hey, I've got an idea!" Harry ignored his friend's question. "Make yourself comfortable. I'll be right back."

"Wait, where you going?"

"I'll fetch us some pizza and something to drink. Not going far, it's right across the road."

"Pizza?"

"Yeah, Muggle food, you'll love it. I'm suddenly starving and the fridge's empty. I would've ordered by phone, but they could look for ages and wouldn't manage to find my flat. Make yourself at home. Oh, and just ignore the mess."

"All right. But just dry your hair before going outside. 'S winter, y'know."

"You're turning into your mum," Harry chuckled.

"Harry dear, you're so thin it's a miracle the wind doesn't knock you off your broom when you fly. You must start feeding yourself properly, young man!" Ron said in a exceptionally good imitation of his mother's voice.

They both burst into laughter.

"Now you see why I have to move out of the Burrow," Ron concluded.

Harry finally stepped through the door, hair dry and a grin on his face. He'd missed laughing with Ron so much. He'd missed laughing, period. But now his friend was waiting for him to return and they would spent the night contradicting over Quidditch, and remembering pranks from their school years, and Harry would pretend that everything was all right. That he had no secrets Ron would hate him for.

When he returned with his purchases, twenty minutes later, Ron was sitting on the sofa. It struck Harry that something was wrong with his friend. He was very silent for a start, but that was not it. Ron was avoiding Harry's eyes.

Then Harry saw the infamous copy of "Witch Weekly" (which Hermione had neglected to take back) in Ron's hands and wanted to kick himself for his stupidity. Leaving it lying around on his floor instead of burning it or something—that was dumber than dumb. Kind of ironic, actually, that Ron had found out the truth in the only place Harry could have prevented him from doing so.

Ron lifted his eyes and met Harry's. His freckled face was flushed and he looked ill at ease.

Harry dropped the bags into the nearest armchair, and waited in silence. Ron opened his mouth to speak but no words came out.

"Ron..."

"Are you—are you, err, y'know..."

Harry knew what Ron meant—was he the sick perv everybody was pointing their finger at?

"I suppose so." He paused, realising it didn't come out very well. "Not entirely." That didn't sound better, either. "I've slept with enough girls to lose count opposed to only three guys. Playing for both teams, as they--" Harry scowled in the direction of the newspaper "--call it. It's what I am. Well, it's getting late. Good night, Ron."

And with that, Harry headed for his bedroom.

"Harry?" Ron finally stood up. "Are you throwing me out or something?"

He'd sounded genuinely puzzled. Harry stopped and turned, a bit surprised.

"No. But I figured you wouldn't want to stay anymore, it being this awkward and stuff. Don't feel compelled to," he ended bitterly.

Harry turned his back again.

"Harry." Ron's voice was hesitant. "Did..."He gulped. "...it cause problems with your team?"

Harry's response was delivered after a second of hesitation in a dull voice.

"My manager is pretty pissed haven't met the other's yet how come you're still here Ron?"

It didn't even sound like a question. Ron's eyes bulged with incredulity at his friends reply.

"I'm your friend... Harry..." More uneasy gulps. "Look... it's all right..." Ron closed the distance between them and his hand came to rest reassuringly on Harry's shoulder, if a bit hesitant at first.

And then Harry felt he couldn't take it anymore. He didn't deserve this. He didn't deserve having friends like Ron. He tore himself away from Ron's touch.

"No, it's not. How come you don't hate me, Ron? How come you're not disgusted? How come I don't freak you out?"

Ron looked hurt. Then angry.

"You're bloody mental, aren't you?" he yelled at Harry. "'S what you want then, is it?! Bloody hell, I can give you that, it's easy—I hate you—I thought you trusted me—and—and I'm positively freaked out—you could've told me—we've shared a bedroom for seven years and you—you never told me!"

"Oh, now you're worried about you're virtue, Ron?" Harry asked him mockingly. "Rest assured, I didn't have any dirty thoughts 'bout you, I was more into blonds. Although, come to think about it..." Harry leaned dangerously close, his lips almost touching Ron's neck.

Ron blushed furiously. Harry felt an acute pang of guilt. He hastily stepped back from his friend.

"I'm tired, Ron, tired of hiding. You think you hate me now? No, let's make it proper loathing, then."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm gonna tell you the whole story. But you'd want to sit down first."

"Come on, mate, you—you scare me. No need to say things like that. I'm sorry I yelled at you."

And Ron didn't sit.

"Suit yourself," Harry shrugged. There was a pause, and then he said,

"Me and Malfoy."

"You and Malfoy what?" And then Ron understood and went pale and sat down this time.

Harry nodded slowly. "He'd started it. I helped him finish. And finish himself off, I might add."

A look of understanding crossed on Ron's still horrified face. "You mean, Malfoy... Draco Malfoy... was... and he... that night... he really?... MALFOY DIED FOR YOU?!" Ron finally snapped.

What Harry had told his friends after 'that night' could have been summarised more or less like this: Draco Malfoy had owled him an empty piece of paper which turned out to be a Portkey that actually worked inside the castle and sent Harry inside the Forbidden Forest, straight into Voldemort's open arms; but then, Malfoy turned up as Voldemort prepared to deliver Harry to the other world ("Perhaps he felt guilty for what he'd done?") and, unfathomable as it sounded, died in his place, right after summoning Harry's wand from his own father's hands.

His friends had yet to come to terms with Harry's account of that night's events, accurate as they were in almost every aspect. Hermione was still baffled by the Portkey and the sheer impossibility of it working inside Hogwarts. Ron, less academically inclined, was still having problems grasping the concept of Malfoy dying in Harry's place.

"Oh, that I wouldn't know," came Harry's reply. "But he certainly died because of me. After I'd shagged him the night before."

Ron's eyes widened in horror before he could stop himself.

"He must've done something to you, Harry! I would bloody kill him, if he weren't dead already! Because of him, it's his fault that you, I mean—" Ron stumbled.

"You mean, because of him I've become like this—a—a pervert? That's what you wanted to say, Ron? You can say it, along with the rest of the world."

"No! No, I didn't want to say that! I don't care, Harry, I don't, honestly. It just came out wrong, I'm sorry. It—it will be all right, in the end. People won't talk for ever. I—listen—we've faced worst together, right?"

"Look, Ron. I'll tell you the whole story. What I figured out, at least. And then you can go back home and hate me for the rest of your life. Don't feel compelled to lend me shoulder to cry on."

"YOU STUPIT GIT!" Ron was reaching the end of his patience. "STOP TELLING ME WHAT TO BLOODY DO AND THINK!"

"Save that for later, will you? Just listen to me now, please? That's the last thing I'll ask of you."

And Harry told him the whole story. About meeting a strange girl at night. About how he lost the Marauder's Map. About Malfoy kissing him out of the blue. About the charade Malfoy had played. About something finally breaking inside when he'd found out the truth. About how he, Harry wanted to hurt Malfoy for his low trick and, at the same time, needed him in order to stay sane. About how good kissing and touching him felt. Ron listened in silence, paling and blushing alternately, and didn't speak for a while after Harry had concluded.

"Did you—did you love him?" he finally asked his friend.

Harry laughed, or, rather, forced himself to.

"What? No, Ron."

::There was too little time,:: his mind treacherously supplied.

"I don't think anyone could have fallen in love with him."

::I'm lying. I just might've. But you don't need to know that, Ron.::

"With his money, maybe. Or his family's power. And those didn't do anything for me. And, anyway, I don't think I believe in love anymore."

::It's easier this way.::

"And he for one didn't."

::Because Malfoy always knew what was good for himself, I have to hand him that.::

Harry filled his lungs with air before continuing, like someone who was preparing to take a long dive to the bottom of the sea. Words started rolling from his lips easier as he kept pouring his soul out.

"I didn't love 'her' either. But I did care about 'her', a lot. I needed 'her'. You wouldn't believe, but 'she' was really fun to be around—except 'she' wasn't real at all. Things were different after I found out the truth. I didn't care about Malfoy like I'd cared about 'her', but I needed him just the same. Maybe more. It started even before I figured out the whole charade, but I'd been too scared to admit it to myself. Some things are above love and hate. He could make me forget. I might've even started to like him a little."

He paused again for a while.

"And that's why I wonder—I can't help wondering, Ron—what would have happened if he'd lived through that night."

And then it struck Harry.

::...and I would give everything to have him back. But you don't need to know that, either.::

"He was a sick bastard, Harry! 'S not whatcha think, I'm not saying you're sick or anything. But Malfoy'd taken that potion night after night and turned himself into a girl only to play mind games with you. I bet it tasted vile and hurt like hell, just remember the Polyjuice Potion. And Malfoy's potion was dark magic, Harry, you can put Galleons on that, and that's the worst you can get. And still he took it, for all the coward he was. He must've hated you more than he loved himself to do that."

"Maybe. I don't know why he did it. Maybe his father made him do it."

Ron slowly shook his head.

"Look, Harry, I know Lucius Malfoy's a screwed-up maniac, but not even him could've asked Draco to become a girl to—to—seduce you or whatever. I think their family's too full of their pureblood crap to even consider it."

"I don't know, Ron, I just don't know, okay! He used to tell me he hated me a lot and mostly I believed it."

"You don't think..." Ron's mouth twitched. "You don't think Malfoy... he'd fallen for you?"

"I think he simply got used to having me while playing 'Mystery Girl' and refused to give it away. He didn't believe in love, I told you. He had some whacked out theory about the whole thing."

"Oh, and when did Malfoy tell you the truth, I ask!" The implication of what he was saying made Ron halt abruptly. "Bloody hell, 's too much for me, mate! I... I need to think 'bout all this."

Ron stood up and smiled weakly.

"I'm still your friend, though I pretty much hate you myself right now. Forgive me, Harry."

-o–#–O–#–o-

The Voice insinuated slowly into his sleep.

::They obviously can't help you, my Chosen.::

Something less than a whisper, yet Harry heard it as clearly as he could hear his heartbeats.

::Oh, it's you again...:: The thought had formulated itself with surprising promptitude in Harry's mind, although he was only semi-awake now.

::You heard them today...:: It persisted.

_I don't care if you experiment a little with boys..._ Hermione's clear voice rang through his head, cold and distant.

::She wasn't taking you seriously.::

_Well, that's not my business anyway, Potter..._ Mr. Pembrook was saying again, hurriedly and somewhat apprehensive.

::It's never their business.::

_...and I'm positively freaked out..._ Ron's angry words announced him.

::That's how it will ever be, no matter how vehemently they deny it.::

_I pretty much hate you myself..._ his friend's goodbye words were replaying in his mind.

::You don't have to be alone.::

_I can't help wondering, Ron—what would have happened if he'd lived through that night..._ Harry's own tormented voice was saying.

::You don't have to just wonder anymore. It's ssso easssy.::

_You don't think Malfoy... he'd fallen for you?_

He was tired, so tired of all this. And then, why not?

It was so easy, after all. And what use for an Evil Book, if not to make true one's darkest desires?

::You won,:: was Harry's final thought before drifting back to his uneasy sleep. ::I will have him back and you're gonna help me, Book.::

::It was bound to happen, my Massster,:: the Voice hissed into his hazy mind. ::Eventually.::

End of Chapter Two


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter III

A Spell So Great

-o–#–O–#–o-

"But my innervoice, it says..."

(Hooverphonic, "Innervoice")

-o–#–O–#–o-

"_A spelle so great, it wakes the Deade,_" Harry read from the black pages of the Book, "_The Weak shalle fall in dire dreade/ By Willin'blood, at mid'night bled, /Throu Stolenblood, at mid'night shedde..._"

He paused to stare some more at the red letters, slightly unsettled by their twisted yet elegant shape and occasionally peculiar spelling.

_A spelle so great, it wakes in hate_

_And neede, and lust, and thirsty waitte..._

::Who wrote it?:: Harry asked the Book—and why couldn't they spell proper English, he wanted to add.

::Oh, don't worry, Master. She was my... uh... nine, ten... er... eleven, twelve... right... sixteen... ah, yes, seventeenth Chosen. You wouldn't have heard her name, but I assure you she was as good at devising spell as she was at rhyming.::

Somehow, this didn't significantly reassure Harry. He turned his gaze to the poem again.

_From Lover's lips at mid'night late,_

_With sheer words un'meant to sate,_

_The Thirstyblood wille shape the Gate. _

_From Foe's wrists spill't in hate awoke'n,_

_With sheer words in darknesse spoke'n,_

_The Bitterblood wille hold It open... _

He stared at the words of the actual spell that had been lain on the following page by the same hand that had written the poem. He didn't understand any.

::What language is this? I've never seen a spell in such an impossible to pronounce language before.::

::Patience, my Chosen. I'll teach you. It will well worth the effort.::

Harry's eyes drifted to the poem again...

_And from his tomb of sylence broke'n,_

_Shall ryse again and walk the Woke'n... _

...and back to the mind-boggling text of the spell.

::That's also her creation, the Tongue of the Forsaken,:: the Voice obligingly explained. ::The Spells in the Tongue are so beautiful they make my pages tremble.::

::Why would someone invent a new language for spells?::

::For the same reason she wrote this particular spell. She didn't write it to bring someone from the Other Side. She wrote it because she could. Ah, such a lonely, heartless thing she was. So misunderstood. Maybe I'll show you my memories of her someday...::

Harry privately thought—as privately as one with a Voice inside his head could, at any rate—that he'd rather pass the oportunity. He finished reading the last verse.

_A spelle so great, it trapps the shade,_

_En'slaves the spelles by Shadow lay'd,_

_It rips throu walls where tears no blade,_

_For Warmblood is its pryce twyce pay'd. _

Harry shuddered.

::It's perfect, this spell,:: the Voice enticed him. ::Perfect for what you need to achieve, my Master. You were both his enemy and his lover. Hate and want will bring him through to you again. Your memories and blood will shape his body again from the ashes of time. You'll have him back.::

Perfect or not, to Harry it looked just like the standard, textbook description of a dark spell. In a recess of his mind, he knew it was in fact a dark spell, and that once he'd have learned the bizarre words and uttered them, willed them into being, there would be no coming back. He'd be condemned forever, even more, inescapably more than he already was.

::I should be on my way to practice. You'll teach me later.::

::But, my Chosen, surely this is more important than--::

The wretched Book must've sensed his hesitation. Yes, so he was afraid. It hadn't stopped him before. It wouldn't stop him now.

::Shut up, Book. I've waited a whole year. I can wait a couple of hours, or days more. And if you say one more word, I swear I'll tear you apart page by page and feed you to the pigeons.::

It was the Book's turn to shudder. Harry was almost positive It had also gulped, although upon a closer examination of the possibility he couldn't fathom how, more precisely, a book could do that.

-o–#–O–#–o-

It was a bleak Monday morning. Harry had just Apparated at a reasonable distance from the small stadium his team used for practice, broom in hand and mind miles away. The stadium was outside the city and an Invisibility Spell had been cast upon it, together with the customary Muggle Repelling Charms. It wouldn't take Harry more than a minute to reach it, even at a lazy pace. Which was good, because it wouldn't leave enough time for tormenting thoughts.

He tried to be rational about the whole thing. Why, now that he had all this seemingly unfathomable power, the first thing he wanted was to bring Malfoy back? The only thing he wanted, actually. Why would he want to use it, this frightening power, at all? It went against everything he'd believed in and fought for, once. If the Book could give him 'everything', as It bragged incessantly (and Harry didn't doubt It could, not anymore) then it was plainly wrong. Its magic was twisted and corrupted. Not evil? Harry was 'prejudiced' against It? It made him laugh. The Book was just as un-evil as Harry was a virgin.

So why did he want to betray everything he believed in only to have Draco back? Apart from the obvious nonsensical urge within him to do so, that was. There was no logical reason, and he knew it. Logically, Malfoy would only be a constant pain in his backside. Maybe even a threat. Definitely a hazard.

Harry experienced a slight tinge of guilt that it hadn't occurred to him until now to bring back Sirius, or his parents, or Cedric... people who hadn't deserved to die. He wasn't sure if Draco did too. But, he realized, he wouldn't want his parents or Sirius to see what had become of him. The pathetic excuse of a human being he'd come to be. And there was something inside him telling that they wouldn't want to be restored to the living world in this manner. He could sense the wrongness of it, a wrongness which somehow fitted Draco.

"Are you gonna stare at that tree any longer, Potter?" a voice sneered behind him.

"Anderson."

His team mate ignored him, muttering the magical words that made the shabby front gate of the stadium appear and stepping through it.

Harry belatedly realised that he had not only arrived at his destination, but successfully failed to notice it for a good couple of minutes like an oblivious Muggle. He followed Anderson, his chest suddenly throbbing with anger. He caught up with the other man in the locker room. The others were not there yet.

Anderson pointedly avoided to look at him and stepped away quickly when Harry accidentally brushed past him as if Harry was carrying some sort of deadly disease. Harry felt he'd reached the end of his patience.

"What is your problem, Anderson?" he suddenly turned and spat at his team mate.

Anderson finally looked at him and shrugged.

"Don't have one, Potter. Unlike you."

Harry fixed him with a cold gaze. His control on his voice was surprisingly good when he spoke next.

"So enlighten me. What exactly is my problem?"

Anderson's lips crumpled in disgust as he answered.

"Thought that was obvious. This team must've sunken really low to need a nancy boy like you to win us matches."

Harry measured up the other man silently. Kiefer Anderson was only a few years older than himself and only one or two inches taller, but he had the constitution of the Beater he was—not a particularly efficient one, but definitely dedicated—so, normally, Harry wouldn't have considered getting into a fight with him, not a physical one at any rate. Normally, Harry would control the anger boiling inside him, or, if it was too much, he would channel it into a biting retort instead.

Because, well, Anderson wasn't really worth it. Harry had never been afraid of him. Yet this time something snapped inside Harry and it wasn't going to tie itself up anytime soon.

But maybe it wouldn't take a fight to put Anderson in his proper place.

Slowly, Harry closed the distance between them without saying anything, just holding Anderson's gaze, defying him to do anything about the increasing lack of space between their bodies. Though looking increasingly uncomfortable about it, Anderson didn't move. He was a proud idiot and Harry knew it. However, pride was going to bring him down this time. He was going to pay for all the times he'd made Harry feel unwelcome and for all the sarcastic remarks thrown in Harry's face without the slightest provocation, which at the time had seemed trifling and not worth bothering, but for some reason were all the more worth bothering now.

Anderson was getting defiant as well. He had green eyes a nuance lighter than Harry's own, not that Harry had bothered to check out Anderson's eyes closely before, but they were kinda hard to ignore when throwing daggers at him. Harry smirked. He had to be very careful now. He was stepping into Anderson's personal space and the other man wasn't going to put up with it much longer. If he was to act, he had to act quickly.

Being kissed by Harry Potter was probably the last thing Anderson expected. Which was why Harry did it, hard and bruising, full on the lips, leaning forward in a split second and clutching the other's man forearms before he could do anything about it. Surprise must have paralysed him, because Anderson didn't react at all at first, didn't shove Harry away, didn't make a sound. The only sign he understood at all what was happening were his eyes wide-opened in horror.

It wasn't a long lasting kiss. Harry withdrew as suddenly as he'd leant forward, still keeping his hands on his team mate.

"Guess you've got a problem of your own now, don't you?" he whispered into the other's face, then let go of him and turned to walk away, almost colliding with a tall, lean figure.

"Oh, good morning, Gareth!" Harry greeted cheerfully. Glen Gareth, the Keeper of their team was standing in the doorway, looking at them with suspicion.

"Morning, Potter," the other replied. "Something going on?"

Harry shrugged.

"Solving differences, Kiefer and I," he responded, using Anderson's given name for the first time in his life before walking through the door without a glance back. Things couldn't have turned out better. He was positive that Gareth hadn't seen him kissing, well, jumping Anderson, but he'd seen enough to get the right ideas. 'Right' to Harry's purposes, at any rate. Anderson would be too embarrassed to admit he'd let Harry do that to him and Gareth would only get more suspicious at Anderson's uneasiness, not to mention at the sight of his slightly bruised (by Harry's kiss) lips. Soon enough, word would spread among the team members and they'd start whispering behind Anderson's back, maybe throw a few jabs at him and start avoiding him, and give him odd looks.

And even if Harry was wrong—that was, even if Anderson would accuse him publicly, he'd still have won, because then Anderson would be forced to give Mr. Pembrook an ultimatum—either him, or Harry would have to leave the team, and Harry knew, even as Anderson knew (though he might refuse to acknowledge it) which the choice would be.

All in all, Harry considered, he was the winner here. His anger, though diminished, was still making his blood boil. He was experiencing a mixture of hate and disgust, equally directed to the world in general and to himself in particular. Anderson had just happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time, specifically—that morning, in Harry's way. And if Harry couldn't help his satisfaction at imagining Anderson being sick over his kiss, trying and failing to wash the memory of it from his lips, how 'sick' did that make him?

His steps carried him to the far end of the stadium, where he could distinguish the tiny silhouette of Mr. Pembrook. Images of what he'd done barely a minute ago kept playing over and over again in front of his eyes, until they almost made him dizzy, until Anderson's face faded into his own and Malfoy was leaning into him on a deserted corridor back at Hogwarts, pressing his cold lips over Harry's.

"Good morning, boss," Harry greeted morosely, his tone indicating it was anything but.

"Where's your broom, Potter? You're here to practice, not to chat." Mr. Pembrook had a one track mind. Harry couldn't care less about practice at the moment.

"Accio," was Harry's only response, and he extended his hand, waiting for the broom he'd summoned to reach him. "Got it right here, Mr. Pembrook."

"You're late. Everybody's late." Mr. Pembrook started to become restless, like he always did when Quidditch was involved.

Three young women and a man—the rest of the team, reserves were coming only later—were strolling carelessly, brooms on their shoulders, to where Harry and Mr. Pembrook stood. Gareth came out of the locker room alone, hurrying up to catch with the rest of them.

"All right, team, no time to waste," Mr. Pembrook started, as he did before every practice session, but suddenly halted. "Where's Anderson?"

Harry raised a brow, but it was Gareth who answered.

"Still in the locker room, boss. He says he isn't feeling well."

Curses rolled out of Mr. Pembrook's tongue.

"I'll give the git 'not feeling well' in a moment," he menaced as he disappeared with a pop.

"Guess Kie's in big shit," one of the girls remarked. The others were silent.

::I did that,:: Harry thought. ::I finally made the bastard break.::

Until that morning, he'd had no idea he wanted to make Anderson break. Doing it had felt good for a fleeting moment, but now he was left with the ever growing emptiness. He knew he should be appalled by what he'd done, or at least alarmed, or ashamed of himself turning into something he despised, but he was too tired for that. Too tired for everything, of everything, except... Some miles away, in his messy flat, hidden under a pile of papers and magazines, the Book lay waiting for him, waiting for Harry to come and claim what It had promised. And so, of course, nothing else seemed to matter.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Hours later, when Harry stepped through the door of his flat, he was hungry, cold and sore from practice. The weather had cooled considerably and snowing had starded again at noon, but Mr. Pembrook insisted to keep them up in the air practicing, practicing, practicing until the wind became so powerful it had almost swept them off their brooms.

Harry got rid of his soaked practice robes as soon as he closed the door behind him, then left a trail of his other clothes across the floors of his living room and bathroom before finally stepping into the shower. The hot water running over his aching body and the hurried lunch he ate right after drying himself restored some of his powers, and he felt ready to face the Book again.

::Master,:: the Voice purred inside his mind as soon as he'd touched the covers.

::Listen, Book, I have no time and patience for games. You're teaching me the spell and that's it.::

::If that's your command. Open me, my Chossen.::

Harry obeyed, like he'd done the first time. The pages fluttered, flipped by an unseen hand until finally the poem and the spell he'd been shown earlier rested once again under Harry's gaze.

::You'll have to learn the spell by heart, my Chosen,:: the Book warned him.

::I can't even pronounce the words, not to mention I don't understand any of them!:: Harry protested.

::It's how it is. It's how it needs to be done,:: the Voice announced serenely. ::You want this spell to succeed, don't you, my young Master?::

Harry sighed. He felt like he was back in school.

::All right. Start teaching me then.::

The Tongue of the Forsaken was a funny language, there was no doubt about it. Some words were made of sounds sharp like a razor blade while others melted on your lips rather like ice cream, sweet and cold at the same time. All were composed without exception of three syllables, which caused sentences to have a peculiar rhythm. Harry made progress faster than he had expected. With the Voice hissing each word inside his head all he had to do was say it out loud until he got it right then move on to the next. Of course, he was no way near being able to recite the spell without reading it.

::Why can't you just say the words inside my head and I repeat them in loud voice?:: he asked, frustrated.

The Voice chuckled. ::It's called cheating, my Master. You have to learn the spell yourself.::

::Great.:: He didn't put too much enthusiasm into that thought. ::I think I'll take a break now. Say, Book, the poem mentions blood. My blood, I assume?::

::Yes, my Chosen. Blood of an enemy, blood of a lover.::

::So... I'm supposed to lay myself in the bathtub and slit my wrists open?:: It wasn't the most appealing of perspectives.

::Surely not, Master. I don't think you'll find a bathtub anywhere near.::

::What do you mean, 'anywhere near'? Where do I have to go to perform the spell, Book?::

The Book didn't seem intimidated because, after all, there's only so much threat one can put into a mere thought.

::It's right there in the poem, Chosen. And from his tomb of sylence broke'n... You see?::

::You mean Malfoy's tomb.:: It wasn't even a question. ::But how am I supposed to find it?::

::You'll find it.:: The words had a strange, deceptive softness about them and slipped almost unnoticed into Harry's mind and the Voice spoke no more that day.

The following days passed with almost no spare moment for Harry. Ron came through his fireplace thrice and, each time, Harry managed to hastily throw the Invisibility Cloak over himself just in time and waited for his friend to leave believing that the flat was empty. Hermione only made one appearance, but she, unlike Ron, didn't leave after a couple of minutes of fruitless attempts to find him. Instead, she sat down in the living room and waited patiently. When she finally stood up to leave a couple of hours later, Harry's whole body was numb from sitting completely still and silent under the Cloak. Moreover, he wasn't completely sure he'd managed to fool Hermione, because even as she was leaving, she startled Harry by speaking...

"I'm fighting a lost battle here, Harry. I know it."

... and Harry couldn't tell if she'd been talking to herself, or to him, or both.

But Ron and Hermione eventually stopped showing up and the days passed just the same. Between practice sessions (mostly held in deplorable weather), learning the spell and avoiding everyone—very dedicated journalists, avid fans, curious acquaintances, his worried friends, even his Muggle neighbours who weren't in the habit of looking twice in his direction anyway—he barely found a little time to do a bit of research as well.

It had been a bit of a challenge to enter the public library in Sprite Square without being immediately recognised as Harry Potter, Wizarding World's Latest Favourite Walking Scandal. In fact, it had taken the combined effects of an Aging Potion (anonymously purchased by owl order; Hedwig had been thrilled to stretch her wings), a Concealing Charm (to hide his scar), a Muggle wig (because, ok, maybe he could Transfigure rats into water goblets, but 'doing' hair was a bit out of his league) and a Repelling Spell cast on himself (just to be sure no one would want to come too close—though he supposed he could've achieved the same effect with a good douse of garlic essence). In the end, his efforts paid off quite nicely.

He had no trouble gathering information about the Malfoys. Since Voldemort's demise, Lucius Malfoy had been missing despite the Ministry's best efforts to capture him—of course, Harry already knew this, but it hadn't really sunk in until now. Draco's father was still alive and hiding somewhere. Harry wondered what Lucius thought of his son's betrayal.

Malfoy Senior on the run and his only son and heir dead, nobody bothered to be too careful with what they wrote about the Malfoy family. The articles mostly dealt with rumours about Lucius's whereabouts and were full of official statements assuring the witches and wizards that the 'capture of the notorious Death Eater was only a matter of days'. As far as Harry could tell, it had been 'a matter of days' for months.

There were fewer articles about Draco, however. It angered Harry that his death seemed to be mentioned only in passing. There was only one short article, actually, that announced the passing of the Malfoy heir and mentioned his burial in the Malfoy family crypt.

To Harry's surprise and delight, he also stumbled upon a very detailed description of the wards placed upon the Malfoy mansion (most of them already taken down by the Aurors only to be replaced with their own) in "Transfiguration Today".

Narcissa Malfoy still lived in the family mansion which was under constant surveillance, in case Lucius committed the imprudence of contacting his wife.

Harry took detailed notes about anything he deemed even remotely useful. By the end of the week, he'd learned so much stuff about the Malfoys that he was sure he'd be entitled to become an honorary member of the family—which was downright scary.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Finally, another Friday night arrived. Harry's mind was a whirlpool of sensations and half-formed thoughts. Had he consciously chosen to acknowledge and allow them to take shape, his thoughts would have gone along the lines of 'There's no turning back now' interspersed with a lot of bad language.

::Second thoughts, my Master?:: the Voice popped inside his head without warning, which was becoming an annoying habit.

::Damn, you startled me. Evil Book or not, I'd appreciate if you stopped sneaking into my mind.::

The Book ruffled Its pages indignantly, but otherwise didn't protest. It laid open on Harry's kitchen table so that he could go through the spell one last time. He knew it by heart now, of course; in fact, he knew it so well he could probably recite it backwards, diagonally or even starting from the middle in both directions at once and skipping every third word, but he needed a way to calm his restlessness.

The light had long since faded outside when Harry snapped the Book close and finally went to dress, absent-mindedly. The plan was to Apparate in Wiltshire, somewhere near the Malfoy mansion and... well, he'd improvise from there. He folded his Invisibility Cloak and placed it inside his backpack, along with a handful of Galleons and pounds, then, as an afterthought, he picked his old Firebolt out of the closet and weighted it pensively. A couple of seconds and a Shrinking Charm later, a miniaturised Firebolt was resting on top of his Cloak inside the backpack. You never knew when a flying broom might come in handy, after all.

He was in no hurry, though. As far as he'd gathered from the poem, the spell was to be performed at midnight and there were enough hours to fill until then.

Harry had no idea how to fill them. Granted, it was probably a good idea to leave early, because he didn't know how close to the mansion he'd manage to Apparate given he'd never been there before. And sneaking into the Malfoys' crypt was bound to take time, as well. He mentally checked (for what was probably the hundredth time) the wards which, according to his research, he needed to be careful about. Then he figured he should get something to eat, even if he wasn't really hungry. And he could always have a chat with the Book if he got bored. Yeah, his life was so full of joys lately.

Stepping into the kitchen, he picked a solitary loaf of bread from the table and tapped it with his wand. The bread was as stiff as rock, which wasn't such a big surprise because his mind hadn't really been into shopping for food lately.

Well, he'd have to improvise. He didn't know any spells for cutting bread, unfortunately. That was Mrs. Weasley's department. He sat down and gazed at the loaf pensively.

::What am I going to do with him, Book, if the spell succeeds?::

::The spell will succeed, my Master, if you... how do they say? Ah, yes, put enough passion in it.::

Harry summoned a knife from atop the fridge and proceeded to 'put enough passion' in cutting the stone-hard bread.

::But you didn't answer my question,:: he thought at the Book.

He summoned a plate next and carefully laid the freshly cut (but far from fresh) slices of bread on it.

::That's because it's an useless question, my Chosen. Because you will be able to do anything with Draco Malfoy.::

"Incendio," Harry muttered, pointing his wand at the plate. He suddenly decided he wanted toast.

The wand-toasting was surprisingly effective. The bread was browning satisfyingly. Harry wandered why he hadn't tried it before.

::Toast?:: he asked the Book.

::I'm a book, Master,:: It replied blandly. ::As you are so fond of pointing out quite often.::

::Your loss,:: Harry shrugged and decided that buttering the toasted bread would be the best next move.

::Do you want to hurt him, Master?::

::No.::

The butter melted into the hot bread and softened it. At least, Harry thought, he'd achieved something 'eatable'.

::But maybe you will. I could show you a few tricks.::

::I don't want to hurt Malfoy,:: he patiently explained as he sunk his teeth into a piece of buttered toast.

::Perhaps you're forgetting what an annoying little brat he can be.::

The thing about having a conversation going on directly into your mind was that you didn't have to wait to swallow before answering back.

::And what would you know about him? You're just--::

::--a book, yes. So what do I know about him? Nothing, Master. Nothing except what you know about him.::

Harry took another bite of toast and stopped to consider the Voice's last words.

::I don't know that much about him. I guess I'm hoping to change that.::

::You, my Chosen, are very adept at fooling yourself.::

::Oh, and how's that?:: Harry wanted to know.

::You're fooling yourself that you care about this Draco Malfoy and that's why you're bringing him back. But you're bringing him back to punish yourself. Because, face it, my Chosen, you may still hate him, but you hate yourself even more. Because you think you've failed everyone.::

Not leaving his chair, Harry leaned right to open the fridge door and put the butter back (it wouldn't do to have one quarter of his food supplies ruined by letting it melt on his kitchen table), then peered some more inside. His wasn't the most well-supplied of fridges. He finally drew out a bottle.

::Pumpkin juice?::

::I'm a book,:: the Book patiently pointed out again.

::Again, it's your loss.:: He poured some juice into a glass but didn't drink it.

::Moreover, you're bringing him back because it's hard to fall asleep at night alone,:: the Voice picked up from where It had left. ::You're bringing him back to see if lying in his arms is as good as you remember. To see why you responded to his kisses in the first place. To see if it was worth.::

::Yeah, you've got my secret plan all figured out.:: Harry produced the mental equivalent of a snort, still not drinking his juice. ::I want to turn Malfoy into my personal sex-slave.::

::Irony won't change the truth. And finally, my Chosen, you're bringing him back because deep down you hope that something better could come out of it, something pure that will heal you both and set you free.::

::You know, for an evil book, you're sort of corny. Have you been talking to that romance novel from Ginny lately?::

::I don't talk with common books!:: the Voice replied in an offended tone.

::But you're not trying to change my mind about the spell, are you?:: Harry inquired. He was curious, but it was a detached sort of curiosity. ::Because you've worked pretty hard to make me do it, Book. And I'm not stupid, you know. I understand that the moment I cast the spell, you'll have me just as I now have you. I still don't understand why you've picked me of all the people, but it doesn't matter. I'll do it. Despite everything.::

::Excellent, my Chosen. You'll indeed do it and succeed. I have no doubt now.::

::So, what, was this some kind of test?::

::Precisely. And you passed.::

::Can't tell you how happy I am. And you think I'm fooling myself? I hate myself, you're right. I still hate Malfoy for what he's done. I want to have him in my bed, yes, I want to know he wanted me just as badly back then and I'm hoping against all hope something would change between us for the better and he will be the cure to my emptiness. But you overlooked one thing, I guess. I also want to tell him that I'm sorry.::

::Sorry for what, my Master?::

::Sorry that I left that morning.:: The last morning of Draco Malfoy's life.

The Book didn't reply and Harry knew it was because he was telling the truth, a truth apparently beyond the connection he shared with the cursed object since It hadn't sensed it in him like It had sensed all the other truths, forcing him to acknowledge them. Perhaps because this was a truth that didn't dwell mostly in his mind, but in his heart. Or because he didn't know it until now, either.

Harry finished his pumpkin juice in a long, thirsty gulp and decided it was time to go. He grabbed the Book and shoved it inside his backpack, not bothering to be gentle.

-o–#–O–#–o-

The Malfoy family crypt was one of the coldest places Harry had ever been. Not surprisingly so, seeing as it was located some ten feet underground. He'd had to climb down a narrow staircase, but luckily the torches on the walls gave enough light to keep him from stumbling and breaking any important body part.

He'd found the mansion relatively easy—meaning that he'd Apparated right across the front gate...on top of a very old pine tree, but that was just a minor detail. Unfortunately, after he'd climbed down the tree, he was still on the wrong side of the gate, which, incidentally, bore an elaborate inscription in French that invited trespassers to shove off or prepare to become disturbingly 'au fait' with Pain. That was the subtext, at any rate. Harry didn't speak French, but he'd found the translation during the many hours spent inside the public library.

Of course, Harry knew from "Transfiguration Today" (blessed be M. J. Mopclyfe, whoever he or she was, for writing that article on the Malfoy mansion wards and protecting spells) that the inscription was mainly for show. Mainly, but not entirely. The trick was not to sneak inside, but actually stride in like you owned the place or were intimately acquainted with the owners of the place. Sneaking in would result, at best, in losing a limb or two and, at worst, in being reduced to a limb or two. For instance, if one tried to fly or climb over the gate, the sharp iron spikes would spring up and pretty much make a human pin cushion of the intruder. Or, if one tried to squeeze between the grates, the attempt would result in a quite literal iron grip. It seemed likely that this kind of 'protection' was almost entirely intended for Muggles, because a wizard or witch would rather Apparate past the gate. For Harry, however, Apparition was out of discussion because of the wards; ironically, it had been the Ministry who'd set up the wards, to 'keep a closer eye on the place'.

Getting into the yard wasn't the hardest part, or so he told himself after managing it unscathed (if you didn't count the damage done by the pine needles to certain parts of his anatomy he'd rather not consider at the moment). Breaking into the mansion was the tricky thing to do, but, luckily for him, Harry didn't need to break into the mansion, which loomed menacingly in front of him. Wrapped in his Cloak, he instead directed his steps eastwards, to the smaller shadow he assumed to be the mausoleum erected to guard over the resting place for generations of Malfoys. Granted, there was a spell guarding the mausoleum gate, but Harry had done his research well—checking up cross-references through enough volumes to make even Hermione proud—so knew how to take the spell down.

And that was how, after the spell had been rendered harmless, he found himself into the Malfoys' crypt, thinking it was one of the coldest places he'd ever been.

While the cold wasn't that much of a surprise, what he hadn't really been prepared for was the ghost. Protected by his Cloak, Harry stared at the silver-haired translucent figure that glided past him. Probably Draco great-great-something. At any rate, the ghost was a hazard. Harry would have to drop his Cloak to perform the spell, which was bound to be messy, and didn't want any witnesses that could draw the alarm.

Careful not to let the Cloak slide he reached as silently as possible inside his backpack and drew out the Book.

::Troubles, my Master?:: asked the Voice.

::I need to get rid of him.:: Harry tilted his head slightly in the direction of the ghost, who, for no apparent reason, was currently coming in and out of a wall.

::May I suggest a Stunning Charm?::

The Book snapped open in his hands so fast that Harry almost dropped it. He slid silently to the floor, letting the Book rest open on his knees, and lit his wand. The instructions for stunning ghosts were pretty straightforward and not so very different from stunning beings made of flesh and bones.

::I didn't know you could stun ghosts.::

::Well, have you tried it before, my Chosen?::

::No.::

::Then how can you tell it won't work?::

So Harry tried it, pointing his wand at the ghost and whispering the magic word from under the Cloak. To his surprise, the ghost stopped mid air and slowly rose until its head passed through the ceiling and then froze in position. Harry checked his watch. Almost midnight. It was time to prepare. At last, he dropped the Invisibility Cloak and went to have a look around.

The crypt consisted in fact from more than one room. The room he was in had walls covered in black marble bearing all sort of inscriptions. He paid them little attention. There was another door, leading further into the crypt, and Harry really hoped he wouldn't have to go through it. He started checking the stone boxes around him methodically, and, sure enough, he found what he was looking for.

He was now standing right in front of Draco Malfoy's tomb.

Harry took a deep breath, trying to control the mad rush of his heart. He needed to be in full control of himself for what came next. He didn't even want to consider what would happen if something went wrong.

He figured that tucking up his sleeves would make a good start. Would his blood be enough? The poem, as far as he'd gathered, said the spell needed willing as well as unwilling blood. Harry was definitely not willing to slit his wrist open, but he knew he'd do it anyway.

He didn't hesitate anymore. He didn't want to lose all his nerve. Pointing his wand at his lower lip, he slashed it with a whispered "Diffindo". He made one last mental note about slashing one's lip on purpose and never doing it again because it hurt like a bitch, and then he started uttering the spell. The words mixed with blood inside his mouth and he could almost taste their power. Nothing had prepared him for it back when he was still learning them. He was only half aware of the darkness surrounding him all of the sudden. It wasn't a frightening darkness. It felt like a door was opening somewhere deep inside himself, opening for all that darkness, calling something... someone... he was supposed to call Draco, Harry remembered.

He tried to think about Draco as the spell went on, tried to feel both hate and desire like the Book had instructed. He tried to remember the night when he'd found out that Draco had disguised himself as a girl to fool Harry. He tried to feel all the anger from back then, he summoned it from his memories and let it take over. The hate strengthened his call, helped him unleash powers he didn't know he possessed. He was pulling something from the darkness... something that was fighting the pull and losing... no, not something, someone... Draco... he was pulling Draco to him... he had to keep this in mind.

He tried to force the hate in the back of his thoughts and remember the lust instead. Trying was needless. He didn't have to 'try'. It had never ceased to be there since that night, the need for Draco's body. The need to be inside him and around him at the same time, the need to feel Draco panting for breath over his skin, biting his lips so he wouldn't scream, then giving up control and scream Harry's name nonetheless, as he came. And Harry could almost feel Draco's body taking shape from his mere memories of it.

Then he noticed the pull was slipping. He realised just in time that he'd finished reciting the spell and rose his left arm above Draco's tomb, pointing his wand at his wrist.

"Diffindo!"

This time it hadn't been a whisper, but a hoarsely cried demand. His wrist now cut open, blood started dripping over Draco's name inscribed in stone. And it kept flowing, and flowing, like the stone was sucking it form Harry's wrist. And when Harry looked closer, it appeared that the stone was indeed feeding on his blood, absorbing it like a sponge, leaving no trace of it behind.

That's when Harry knew his part was over, that his blood had been accepted and the spell had been successful. With this knowledge, he withdrew his hand from above the tomb, wrapped his handkerchief as tightly as he could around the slit wrist and settled to wait. He'd extended the invitation. It was Draco's turn to do his part and show up, and Harry knew he hadn't given Draco much of a choice in this matter.

End of Chapter Three

Author's note: If anybody was wondering, the little poem at the beginning is my own unworthy creation. Its horrendous spelling was inspired by Agnes Nutter's prophecies from 'Good Omens' (a great novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett).


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter IV

Out of the Crypt

-o–#–O–#–o-

"You don't know how lovely you are..."

(Coldplay, "The Scientist")

-o–#–O–#–o-

Draco was lying in the snow. He was dead and he knew it—because, well, it wasn't an event to pass exactly unnoticed—but it didn't bother him as much as he might have expected Before, when he'd still been alive. His mind had simply registered it at some point, labelled the information, put it on an immaterial shelf of his memory and continued to function just as before. It was kind of like knowing the Sun is some 92 million miles away from Earth; you accepted it as real, but your mind couldn't really grasp it because it was simply huge, 'too' huge. The same went for being dead. Draco knew it, but it didn't quite affect him, because he couldn't even begin to comprehend the immensity of it and, consequently, didn't bother to.

If being dead meant lying in the snow like this, it was nicer than most people thought. He didn't feel cold, or tired, or hungry, or bored, or confused, or troubled, or afraid... the list was too long. All he had to do was lie there and not worry about anything at all. And he was wearing his favourite pair of robes. Somehow, this was also very important. And nice.

Yeah, everything was nice. He felt content. He couldn't remember whether he'd ever been that content Before.

He didn't get bored, despite the fact he did nothing all day long. Well, 'day' wasn't entirely accurate, because there was none of that day-night-day-night nonsense here. Time had become a meaningless concept. The sky was mostly covered by a thick, white layer of clouds, but sometimes it turned crimson, which Draco found fascinating. And when his sky turned crimson, the snow also reflected it and Draco felt like he was bathing in the colour. It made him smile, but he still didn't move. There was no need to. And then, some other times, the sky was a deep dark blue and full of falling stars, and Draco also felt like falling. But only rarely. Most of the time, the sky was white and endless, just like the snow.

Of course, as time didn't have any meaning anymore, Draco always felt like he'd been lying there for a fleeting moment and an eternity altogether.

-o–#–O–#–o-

It had started to snow again. The occurrence wasn't unusual, but Draco never got buried under the new layers. This time, the flakes were rather large and fluffy and felt like feathery touches melting into his skin.

But something wasn't quite right. Among the crazy swirling of flakes, Draco could still make out the sky, and the sky was turning black. Not crimson, not dark blue, but the deepest, most depressing black. He frowned. The wonderful feeling of peace and happiness that flowed through him only moments ago was beginning to fade. So he started to panic. And he was very, very cold all of the sudden.

Something was calling to him. Reluctantly, he stood up and started walking. He didn't know where to, but his feet didn't seem to be bothered by his lack of understanding and were dragging him to that something. The snow and flakes around him were fading, replaced by fog, which was quickly turning the colour of the sky. It was so dark. And then he started to remember. At first, he only remembered he'd chosen to forget.

Then, as he kept walking against his will yet powerless to resist, his memories, the very ones he'd chosen to cast away started coming back to him in slow waves. He remembered his parents before anything else, his mother combing his hair, his father giving him a lecture for messing with his 'private papers'. His house, his room, his favourite spot in the garden. His seventh birthday, getting his first broom and chasing the house elves on it. Receiving another lecture, then receiving proper flying lessons. He remembered himself laughing, then he remembered how he learned to turn smiles into sneers and childish whines into haughty demands.

His feet were dragging him further and further, and he finally remembered he wasn't just Draco anymore. He was a Malfoy. He was Draco Malfoy again. And memories started to rush now.

His eleventh birthday. First time on the Hogwarts Express. Harry Potter. The sorting ceremony. His first summer vacation. His first Quidditch match. Potter again. First kiss. First dark spell he'd learned. More summer vacations. His Slytherin days back at school. First fuck. More dark spells. Coming back for his seventh year. His father's letter. Potter. First time kissing Potter. The need, the desperation, the confusion, the self-loathing. Hating Potter. Wanting Potter. Wanting Potter not to die.

He was feeling all of it again.

He remembered he'd chosen to die, all right. He'd chosen to die for a lot of reasons, some better than the others. For one, because he was scared and tired. Also, because he was a coward who believed he could do something brave for a change. Because his life had been empty before he started groping Potter in deserted corridors and he hadn't even been aware of it. Mostly, because it was the reasonable thing to do, because it wasn't possible for him to become a Death Eater anymore and, really, death was the easy way out of it if he was to believe some of his father's rather gruesome bedtime stories.

Yet he'd chosen to die while safe and cosy in his room and only Salazar knew how he'd managed to hang on to his choice during the never-ending minutes of running in the dark through the Forbidden Forest, with nothing to guide him but a spell to locate his father. He remembered how madly his heart had been rushing then. He remembered fooling himself till the last moment that, maybe, it wouldn't really be his death for Potter's life. That maybe they both could live. He remembered that he wouldn't have been able to do it at all, had it not happened so fast. If His Sullen Evilness would have taken his time to torture Potter instead of AK-ing him under Draco's very eyes, Draco would have lost all his resolve, possibly even confessed his betrayal and begged for forgiveness in a most unbecoming manner.

But the green flash of light really hadn't given him any time to think. He was already preparing to summon Potter's wand from his father, when he realised it would be too late if Potter got hit by the curse. He'd placed himself between Potter and the green light much like one raises one's hand to fend from sudden light. Instinctively.

The truth was, in the end he'd actually kind of died by mistake. He wasn't really cut out to be brave.

It was completely dark all around him now. The pain erupted inside his chest so violently and suddenly that it brought him on his knees. He irrationally prayed, to no one in particular, to make it stop, but the pain trapped his body, paralysing his movements, swirling inside his chest and suffocating him. When it finally stopped, everything around him was a blur, yet his mind was exceptionally clear. He registered the rage building inside him with a cold detachment. Somebody had taken away his perfect little piece of heaven and given him this instead.

All the hate and the coldness and the annoying contradictory feelings.

His life.

And he was supposed to be dead, because he'd chosen to die, against all fear and expectation.

As he stood up, still not seeing clearly but feeling the cold acutely, Draco swore that whoever had done it, whoever had brought him back, was going to pay—dearly.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Harry was at a loss of words, partly due to the effort he'd put into casting the spell which left him panting for breath, partly because of the heavy loss of blood, but mostly because of the sight in front of his eyes. Draco stood right there, more real than in any of his dreams yet bearing a sort of cold glow around him that wasn't of this world. He was also quite naked and looked in Harry's direction without giving any sign of actually seeing him.

None of them said anything for several moments. Harry continued to stare at the other youth, which made him finally realize that the strange glow he seemed to be emitting was nothing but an optical effect caused by torch light and Draco's unusual paleness. He also realized the other must be freezing when Draco put his arms around himself in an useless attempt to warm himself up, still oblivious to Harry's presence.

Harry knew he would have to do something, or at least say something, but nothing appropriate came to his mind. He'd brought Draco back to ask him 'Why?', but that was no time for questions. He'd brought Draco back to feel his warmth in his arms once more, but Draco looked so cold that Harry was afraid to touch him. Eventually, he let the first words of greeting that came to his mouth roll off and braced himself for whatever was bound to follow.

"Malfoy. It's been a while."

"Potter." The answer had been hissed with surprise and anger. "Just what the hell do you think you're doing?"

Harry hadn't expected this sort of reply.

"Thought you'd be more grateful. Should've known better," he mumbled to himself.

"I'm cold, Potter. I'm also quite miserable and apparently blind."

"You're also naked," Harry couldn't resist to add.

It hadn't crossed his mind to bring any clothes for Draco. For lack of a better idea, he divested himself of his robes, which left him in his jeans and a woollen sweater, and approached Draco, wrapping the other gently in the not so soft fabric. They both flinched at the contact. Draco's skin was a significant number of degrees colder than normal for a human being.

::For a living human being,:: Harry corrected himself and shivered. Draco hardly looked alive.

"What are you doing, Potter?" the blond sneered.

"Taking care of your problems, well, two of them at least. The cold and the indecent attire. I'll put on a charm to warm these—" he touched the fabric of his robes lightly "—up."

"I can do it myself. Where's my wand?"

"How the hell should I know?"

Harry thought he'd heard Draco muttering something that sounded suspiciously akin to an insult, but let it pass.

"So. Where are we, Potter?"

"This is, erm, well, it's your tomb."

"Excellent!"

Harry failed to see what was so excellent about it.

"Don't just stand there like a dummy, Potter," came Draco's angry voice, despite the fact he couldn't actually see what Harry was doing. "Get my wand!"

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. If this is really my tomb, my wand must be in my coffin, along with my earthly remains. It's a family custom. So if you'd be so kind..."

"Let me see if I get this right. You want me to open your coffin..." Harry began, his tone incredulous. It was going to be a long and exhausting night. "Tough chance, Malfoy. As in, not going to happen. I don't fancy a close encounter with your 'earthly remains'."

"Still having troubles in the logic department, Scarhead, I see. Which is, of course, just a figure of speech, because, thanks to you, I don't actually see. But seeing that I stand here right in front of you, your stupid brain should have inferred that there are no 'earthly remains' in my place of eternal rest," he said in a contemptuous tone.

"That's it. I'm out of here."

"Potter! Don't leave me here!"

Of course, it figured that if someone could bark commands while half-naked, blind and, not to mention, freshly returned from death, Draco Malfoy would be the one to do it.

"And why not, Malfoy? Why shouldn't I leave you here?"

There was a pause, and then, when Harry had nearly given up expecting Draco to come up with a good answer, because there was no good answer to that, right?... because...

"Because it's your fault," Draco whispered faintly, but Harry caught it. "You did this to me. It's your stupid fault!"

Harry wasn't surprised that Draco would place the blame on him. He always had, for as long as they'd known each other. Only, this time Draco was right to blame Harry, so Harry swallowed the biting come-back which tickled the tip of his tongue and proceeded to retrieve the object in discussion from Draco's 'place of eternal rest'. He supposed he should be grateful that Malfoy had been buried under a slab of stone rather than under six feet of solid, stiff frozen ground.

A few minutes of intensive magicwork later (mostly, heavy object levitation), Harry was forced to give Draco credit for his earlier assessment—his coffin was indeed empty save for his wand.

"Here," he said rather forcefully while shoving the wand into Draco's hands. "So can we go now?"

"By all means, Potter, you're more than free to leave and exempt me from your presence."

"What happened to that 'Oh, please, don't leave me here'?"

"I have my wand now. And I definitely didn't say 'please', you twisted freak. You'd like to hear me beg, wouldn't you, Potter?"

"Save it, Malfoy. I'm not wasting my temper on you anymore. I'm leaving and you're coming with me. First, we get out of here and then Apparate inside my flat. End of discussion."

Harry didn't wait for an answer and grabbed Draco's wrist—Draco's very cold wrist—and dragged him to the exit. A hiss escaped the blond's mouth.

"What!" Harry snapped but didn't stop walking.

"I'm barefoot here, you moron! I think I've cut my sole."

"Mobilicorpus! Now you don't have to walk, is that fine?" Maybe it was the edge in Harry's voice, or maybe Draco didn't want another sole cut, but he didn't make any gesture of removing the spell, contending himself to clutch his wand fiercely.

Harry guided Draco's body as smooth as he could up the stairs, suppressing the urge to let him knock, 'by mistake', the low ceiling. Finally, they were outside in the cold night air and Harry lowered Draco in the snow which earned him a fresh assortment of curses.

"Stop complaining like a two-year old. We're getting out of here right now," he said irritably and raised his wand.

"I can't Apparate," Draco announced lazily, almost bored.

It was Harry's turn to curse. He could swear that Draco actually enjoyed delivering that alarming piece of news, despite the messy situation it put them in. How could Malfoy not know how to Apparate? Harry remembered that even Neville Longbottom had managed it after a dozen of tries or so.

"Damn it, Malfoy! Shit! I'll have to teach you, but we must get out of here first!"

He fumbled inside his backpack and finally retrieved his miniaturised Firebolt.

"Is that--" Draco's mouth fell open. "You've shrunk your Firebolt, Potter? Merlin's ass! Are you really that stupid? Brooms, especially high-quality brooms, are sensitive tools. Don't you know the basic rules of shrinking? Rule number one. A wizards does not shrink his broom. Rule number two. A wizard does not shrink his--"

"Malfoy!"

Draco finally shut his mouth and Harry could reverse the charm he'd put on his broom.

"Oh, no. No, no and no, Potter. I'm not riding that broom after what you've done to it. It could be damaged. We could--"

"What? Die? Didn't think you'd care. Do you have a better solution?"

Harry didn't waste any more time and pulled a now surprisingly obedient Draco to the Firebolt hovering above the snow. He mounted the broom and turned to give the youth behind him an expectant look. Sighing, Draco took his place behind Harry and they took off. It was more difficult to fly with someone else sitting at his back and Harry had to use all his skills to maintain balance. Draco was holding him tight enough to cut his breath. He shouted a comment about it and the grip loosened.

They flew a good distance away from the mansion before Harry finally decided it would probably be a good idea to land. His teeth were chattering madly with the cold. It was winter, after all, and he didn't wear but a sweater and Draco's proximity during their flight had been no good at warming him up. If anything, it somehow chilled him even more.

"I can't Apparate, Potter."

"Yeah, we've already covered that. I'm gonna--"

"—do precisely nothing. Stop being such a numbskull, Potter." The blond shook his head patronizingly. "There's no use teaching me to Apparate, because I already know how. However, if I use my wand to Apparate, the whole Ministry of Magic will be on my tail. Because as far as they're concerned, this wand belongs to someone who's dead and dead men don't do spells."

Harry swore.

"You mean they keep track of that?"

Draco didn't deign to reply, but his facial expression plainly told Harry that he thought the former Gryffindor was indeed dense.

"So you can't do magic with your wand," said Harry. "Any magic at all. Why did you ask me to get it for, then?"

"Moral reassurance," came the smug reply. "And it was fun to see you sweating over it."

"Wait a—You got your sight back." It wasn't even a question. Comprehension dawned. "You had it back since before we took off from your yard. You saw me de-miniaturising my Firebolt." "

"Yes, Potter, and that's the part where you acknowledge you utter patheticallity."

"That's not even a word. You. Sneaky. Lying. Bastard."

"I'll take that as a compliment, coming from you."

Harry only belatedly noticed that Draco's teeth were chattering as well. He pointed his wand at his chest, causing a startled gasp.

"I thought Gryffindors didn't attack unarmed opponents." His voice sounded a little scared and Harry didn't feel at all remorseful for the pleasure he felt. Draco Malfoy was getting what he deserved.

"Well, you're not technically 'unarmed'. Stand still, Malfoy."

Draco was positively terrified now, despite his best efforts to hide it. Smirking, Harry performed the Cold Repelling Charm on Draco's (which were actually Harry's) robes.

"Now let's find a place to unfreeze our bones, Malfoy. Don't know about you, but I'd rather skip the part where we die of hypothermia."

Harry was on his way to remount the broom when,

"Incidentally, Potter, was that Great-Great-Great-Uncle Clovis hanging up there in my family's crypt?"

"Damn it, Malfoy. Have you actually been blinded, or faked it all along?"

"I don't like the tone of your voice, Potter, and, yes, I have been blinded, but it went away rather quickly and you didn't answer my question."

"If your Great-Great-Great-Uncle was a ghost in your family crypt, then yes. I had to stun him to get him out of my way."

Harry assumed Draco was going to at least put up a formal protest at this blatant mistreatment of his ancestor. Instead, Draco just laughed.

"This is almost too good to be true. You, Potter, stunned a ghost that is blind, deaf and mute. I have no idea how you did it. In fact, I didn't know you could stun a ghost, but let me assure you it was pretty much useless."

"How can a ghost be deaf, blind and mute?" Harry asked angrily. This had to be Malfoy's petty idea of a payback for Harry's earlier trick.

"Great-Great-Great-Uncle Clovis was deaf, blind and mute, at least for the last ten years of his life, which is actually quite a funny story, but I'm not going to impart our family's secrets to you of all people. Ergo, his ghost is deaf, blind and mute."

Harry gave up arguing. It was too damn cold for it.

"We don't have time for that," he sighed in frustration and all but dragged Draco back onto the Firebolt.

-o–#–O–#–o-

They ended up in a motel room in the middle of nowhere. Harry realised how suspicious he must've looked to the woman at the front desk—a young man coming seemingly from nowhere in the middle of the night, with nothing but a backpack for luggage, sporting a cut across his lip and, as he noticed too late, with dried blood on his hands and sleeves. At least he'd convinced Draco to hide under the Cloak and follow him silently.

The room was no way near five-star comfort, but Harry was most prepared to do without comfort and if Malfoy had any complaints, well, Harry was the one who was paying for everything, after all.

The light switch had baffled Draco for a couple of seconds. After Harry had turned on the lights, Draco went straight to the switch and promptly turned the lights back off. And on. And off. And on. And off. And—

"Malfoy!"

Mercifully, the lights stayed on this time allowing Draco to give him a questioning look which Harry found rather amusing.

"What, didn't you take Muggle Studies?" Harry faked amazement. This earned him a scowl. "Just don't play with electricity," he continued, hoping he sounded convincing enough. "You might get fried."

Draco's hand snapped reflexively from near the switch. Harry chuckled. This was almost as good as warning Dudley off his wand, back in his days with the Dursleys, by telling him his head would explode if he touched it.

Neither of them said anything during the following minutes. Harry allowed himself to slip into an old, battered armchair and was busy trying to get the blood stains out of his sweater. Draco went to lie on the bed and started rubbing his feet which looked pretty much blue with cold. Then Harry lifted his eyes and saw Draco standing on that bed, and reality finally hit home. He'd brought Draco Malfoy back from death. Shit. He'd done a spell—a dark spell—which could probably get him into Azkaban for life. Double shit. How was he supposed to keep Draco hidden from everyone? Why had he thought he could handle this? And what was he supposed to do with Malfoy now?

"Don't stare at me like that, Potter. It's unnerving. Or do you find me that irresistible?"

One thing was sure. It took more than a year of being death to make a Malfoy forget how to sneer.

"What?"

"I said—"Draco started to say, faking condescendence, when Harry finally snapped out of his confused state and interrupted him.

"I heard what you said."

"Then stop asking dumb questions."

"I'm stuck here, Malfoy, and you're not helping."

This made Draco laugh.

"Starting to panic now? Guess I overestimated you, Potter. But there, you do one dark spell and the conscience crisis hits."

"Oh, my apologies, Malfoy, for not being as well trained as you in that area."

"Listen, Potter, I'm not the one raising the dead here. You've practically earned yourself an invitation to a Dementor-snogging feast. Oooh, I said 'Dementor', Scarhead, shouldn't you faint?"

"That 'joke' wasn't funny even when it wasn't half a decade old."

Draco ignored the comment.

"You really think you're in trouble? What about me? What about me, Potter?"

Sure, it was always about Malfoy, Harry thought furiously and then had to say it out loud.

"Of course it's always about me," Draco retorted arrogantly. "What they'll do to you when they find out is nothing compared to what they'll do to me."

"If they find out. If."

"So you're gonna hide me under your bed like a dirty secret?" Harry didn't like the tone of Draco's voice.

"Damn, Potter, why did you do it?" Malfoy snapped, startling Harry with the fury behind his words.

"Why did I...?"

"Yes, why couldn't you leave me alone?"

This was wrong. Harry had brought Draco back so that he could ask the questions. Not the other way around.

"Oh, no, Malfoy. You have no right. Those are my questions. Why couldn't you leave me alone? Why did you do it? Why did you die?"

"So that's what this is about? You felt guilty and decided to ruin my death just like you ruined my life?"

"That's rich, coming from you. How, might I ask, did I ruin your life?"

"Like this." And then, in one hasty move Draco was standing over him, one of his knees pushing into Harry's thigh, pale hands clutching the front of his sweater and dragging him forward.

It wasn't like Harry remembered. It wasn't like Harry had imagined. Draco's lips meeting his were cold, were beyond cold. It was like sinking into a frozen ocean, like drowning, so much like drowning that Harry was paralysed. He let Draco's body press into his, he let Draco put his hands in his hair and twist almost painfully, he let Draco pry his lips open and shove his tongue inside like he wanted to suck all of Harry's warmth. Harry let him and it was lucky that Draco had more sense and eventually withdrew, because Harry would have otherwise just stood there and let Draco kiss him until they both suffocated. But Draco withdrew and Harry slowly regained his breath and, with it, a growing sense of panic took over him. He jumped from the chair, pushing Draco away, grabbed his Invisibility Cloak and ran, ran without thinking, ran over the stairs taking two at a time, ran over the front desk which was thankfully empty, ran through the door into the cold air outside, ran because no matter how cold it was outside Draco's touch had felt infinitely colder and Harry was scared.

He finally stopped outside a small grocery store of sorts. Using his wand to unlock the door, he silently slipped inside and, for endless minutes, just stood there under the double protection of darkness and his Cloak, starring at neat rows of cans, until the panic subsided. When he finally regained enough control to think about uttering 'Lumos', the first thing Harry noticed was that the 'neat rows of cans' he'd been starring at were actually neat rows of toilet paper rolls, which struck him as incredibly funny. The sound of his own laughter almost scared him, but then he managed to get a grip over himself and have a go at sanity for a change.

He'd gone crazy. Malfoy kissed him and he'd suddenly lost his mind, and not in the good sense of the word. He supposed he could blame the time spent in the cold and the blood loss, but deep down he knew the actual reason. He hadn't really 'resurrected' Draco, because resurrecting someone was impossible, he'd known it was impossible. What he'd gotten instead was a walking corpse. How much of the real Draco was actually under the cold flesh? How could Harry tell if the Draco Malfoy he'd left behind in that room was the same Draco Malfoy who'd died a year ago and not a memory Harry had pushed into that cold body by spilling his own blood and speaking words he shouldn't have spoken? The Book hadn't told him everything, it appeared. Or, maybe, the Book had 'conveniently forgotten' to tell him everything, he realised. The Book was going to be fed to the pigeons. And then he realised something else. Not only had he lost it badly, but acted incredibly stupid on behalf of that. Shit, what he'd been thinking? He'd left Draco—the body that looked like Draco and talked like Draco, but felt so cold and Harry still wanted it to be Draco and not just a walking corpse—alone in a Muggle motel. He'd left the Evil Book with him. (Because no matter what that Book said, It was evil.) Malfoy had probably found It by now, because among the many things Draco Malfoy didn't respect was other people privacy. Harry was ready to bet the former Slytherin had given his backpack a thorough search as soon as Harry's steps on the stairs faded. By now, the Book and him were probably the best of friends.

At any rate, the harm was most likely already done. He would go back to the room, but not before he took care of other rather urgent things. Harry wasn't worried that Draco would run away because he had nowhere to go except maybe back at his house, and he hadn't exactly put up a fight when Harry had taken both of them out of there. They needed some food, for a start.

::Great, now I'm robbing a grocery. Guess I really lived up to my aunt's and uncle's expectations,:: Harry grimly reflected while picking up an extra-large bag of waffles and a couple of soda cans. He would have left some money, but all his money was also back at the motel.

The cold outside made him realise he'd need some clothes, too. At least for Draco, because they would fly most of tomorrow (today, actually, but it was disconcerting to think of 'tomorrow' as 'today' while it was so dark outside), because Malfoy couldn't go on wearing Harry's robes and only Harry's robes. He didn't think Malfoy would appreciate the exposure.

He kept the Cloak on although the streets were, no surprise, deserted. After walking around with no clue for maybe ten minutes, he stumbled almost by mistake over a place that, for shrewd reasons, offered the customer a mixed selection of (as far as Harry could tell) house appliances, dog food, toys and—thank Merlin!—clothes. Breaking in was easy (people in this town must've been really trusting because there was no alarm here either). Once inside, there weren't so much clothes to choose from, but, he figured, if Malfoy complained, he could fly in the buff.

-o–#–O–#–o-

The room was empty. Harry could not believe his eyes. The room was fucking empty. At least his backpack was in the same spot he'd left it. He hastily went to check the contents. Nothing was missing. Even the Book was still there.

"So you finally decided to come back?"

Harry literally jumped. Draco was standing in the bathroom doorframe, his hair wet, but still wearing Harry's robes. And he was laughing.

"Guilty conscience, Potter? I didn't know you were so easy to startle."

"Look, Malfoy... Draco." Draco raised an eyebrow at Harry calling him by his first name. "We need to talk."

"Is that so, _Harry_?"

"I... I think I've made a mistake. And we need to talk."

"No."

"No?"

"No. You need to talk. I don't."

"Don't you care at all about what will happen to you?" Harry snapped.

"_Harry_, you've just hurt my feelings. I thought you knew me better. What will happen to me is all I care about," Draco answered, somewhat mockingly to Harry's ears. Then his voice became icy. "And that's why, Potter, you're not going to get rid of me while I'm penniless and can't do magic. Because if you do, I will put you in Azkaban."

So that's what Draco really expected he would do? At least it explained the grouchy attitude. Sort of.

"I'm not afraid of you or your threats. And if I really wanted to get rid of you, I wouldn't have bothered to bring you back in the first place," said Harry and his voice was composed, not betraying the desperation he felt. It was like he and Draco talked two different languages. It was like talking Parseltongue to a wall and, still, the wall might have answered back—Harry had seen stranger things happening. But how could he make Draco understand?

"Draco, you're coming with me. Home." The last word took even Harry by surprise. He'd never thought of his flat in Cardiff as 'home' before. He'd never thought as any place as 'home'. Hogwarts had come closest, but it hadn't really been 'home' either.

Draco appeared to be surprised as well, judging by the way he was blinking and not saying anything.

"I live alone," Harry continued. "No one has to know I brought you back. It will be difficult to keep it from Ron and Hermione, but not impossible. Then maybe, after a while, I'll be able to make them understand. Ron already knows about us--"

"You told Weasel?! You told Weasel you did me while I was a girl?!"

"I didn't go into details, Malfoy," Harry answered, starting to get annoyed. Malfoy really only cared about himself. "No need for you to get hysterical. But I did tell Ron almost everything."

Draco didn't miss the word 'almost'.

"You didn't tell him you were going to bring me back," he pointed out.

Harry didn't answer, because it hadn't really been a question.

"You didn't tell him," the blond repeated. "Perhaps because then you'd have had to explain why? But you can tell me why, 'Harry'. It's my right to know, don't you think? Seeing that I didn't have that much of a choice... The least you could do is tell me."

"Don't you see why?" Harry was desperately trying to buy himself time.

"Well, Potter, I know you are lame, but even you should have been able to find someone willing to fuck you among the living."

Draco's words conjured to Harry's mind images that made him blush and shiver at once. Images of him taking off Draco's clothes one night in the Slytherin's dormitory. Images of the two of them naked on Draco's bed and still fighting, then kissing and touching like mad people, leaning one into the other with an aching desperation. Images that scared him now because he didn't think he'd be able to touch Draco again without the panic and uncertainty returning. He could convince himself that Draco was back, was alive, that it was Draco standing in front of him now and not some abomination he'd conjured, as long as he didn't touch him.

"That's not why I did it, Malfoy." Harry knew he was lying, knew it was one of the reasons he'd done it, but the lie was closer to the truth now than it would have been several hours ago. He was not going to touch Draco Malfoy ever again. "I can find enough willing bed partners. 'Living' bed partners, as you've so charmingly put it. You weren't even that good."

He didn't understand why he felt the need to be cruel. Draco narrowed his eyes and Harry wondered if the other could see through his lie, could see that for a whole year Harry dreamt about Draco even when he fell asleep in the arms of all those girls he'd picked so indiscriminately and carelessly at nightclubs.

"I don't know why I did it. Or rather, it's hard to put into words. I needed to do it, Malfoy."

It was true. Harry couldn't find the words to explain it. He'd expected everything to become clearer after Draco was in front of him again, but if something, they'd gotten even more complicated. He was certain Draco would laugh at him if he said he wanted to know him better, that maybe then he'd understand Draco saving him that night. He wasn't quite so sure about how Draco would react if Harry told him he'd brought him back because he couldn't stand hating himself so much.

"I brought you some clothes." Harry pointed to the bundle he'd dropped on the floor. Draco walked past him and picked it up, staring at it with distaste.

"These are not clothes, Potter. These are rags."

"Those are clothes. And you're going to wear them. In a couple of hours, we'll go flying again and it's winter. We'll have to fly all the way to Cardiff, high enough in the air so that Muggles don't spot us."

Draco was silent, so Harry took it as approval.

"We should catch some sleep now."

"Suit yourself. I'm not tired." And Draco sat down in the only armchair of the room, looking at Harry like a petulant child defying his parents to punish him for not respecting his bedtime hour. Harry sighed. He had been about to suggest Draco take the bed, while he would have contended with the armchair. It seem there was no need for self-sacrificing anymore.

"Fine. Wake me up in two hours or strangle me in my sleep, I don't care."

He collapsed on the bed, which creaked loudly.

"Then we have a deal, Potter," came the drawled answer.

The last he did before drifting off was wonder if Draco had, in fact, just agreed to strangle him while he slept.

End of Chapter Four


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter V

A New (Un)Life

-o–#–O–#–o-

"With your snake skin dead bodies evening all..."

(The Copper Temple Clause, "Promises, Promises")

-o–#–O–#–o-

Cold, cold, cold. Draco was cold and had, in fact, never ceased to be cold ever since he'd been unceremoniously pulled out from his own personal heaven and back to life—if one could call this living—by none other than Harry Potter; Potter who was perfect, Potter who always caught the Snitch, Potter who always saved the day.

Potter who, apparently, could cast a spell to raise the dead. Draco was impressed enough to grant the thought a raised eye-brow.

He still hated Potter, that much was clear. He might feel a lot of other things about him, annoyingly contradictory things, but it was good to still be able to say without lying ("Not lying, Draco, stretching the truth", as his father used to correct him) that he hated Potter. Intensely disliked him. Totally didn't stand the bastard. And for the first time in his life (right, 'life', what 'life'?) he actually had a good reason. Well, maybe not a good reason, but, at any rate, a reason.

He was cold. Not suffering from cold. Potter, being Potter, hadn't quite grasped the distinction. Draco could feel his body was cold, but the cold didn't actually affect him. It wasn't the kind of cold that made your teeth chatter, not for most of the time anyway. It was the kind of cold that made Potter sick from touching him.

Draco was aware that Potter must have done some pretty dark stuff to bring him from That Other Side to This Other Side. Firstly, because spells that rose the dead were implicitly dark. Secondly, because he could feel it in every fibre of his body. He could feel his blood running slower in his veins, his heart pumping slower inside his chest, his skin almost peeling off and dropping from his limbs. All right, maybe he didn't feel his skin peeling off. He would have liked to see Potter's face if it did, though. Draco grinned—a little malicious grin worthy of a member of Salazar Slytherin's house.

"Remembered something funny, Malfoy?" Potter's voice interrupted his silent meditation upon being the undead minority among entirely alive and, he should add, annoying people.

"Nah, just seen your face, Scarhead."

They were back at what Potter referred to as his 'home'. Or, rather, Potter was back and Draco was still trying to adjust to the place. It was messy and not much more could be said about it, not much more that was even remotely nice, at any rate. And after a whole day of flying on broom across country in mid-winter, Draco felt a small tinge of gratitude towards having a roof above his head, so, he figured, he could always find nasty things to say about Potter's flat some other day. But he didn't see why he should spare the owner.

"Say, Potter, how come you've inflicted yourself upon the Catapults?"

Draco found the huge Caerphilly Catapults poster hanging on the wall in front of him incredibly funny. The fact that Potter was in it, looking distinctly distressed and, not to mention, appalling in blue was most of the reason why.

"You should worry more about the next curse coming out of my wand being inflicted upon you, if you don't shut up," Harry snapped.

Draco refrained from commenting. It seemed that Scarhead was still a bit testy after their merry broom country crossing.

**Several hours ago, during the Infernal Flight...**

The wind swished maliciously around them, waiting for a chance to throw them off the Firebolt. Draco tightened his grip around Harry's waist and braced himself.

"MALFOY!" Harry roared, trying to cover the wind, "FOR THE THOUSANDTH TIME, I CAN'T BREATHE IF YOU DO THAT!"

Draco pretended he didn't hear. It all figured—Potter wouldn't care if he dropped off the broom, the selfish bastard. The Firebolt wobbled uncertainly in the air. He shifted even closer to Harry, not wanting to take any kind of risk.

"MMFLOWPH!!!"

After a couple of seconds of careful consideration Draco finally conceded that maybe Potter really needed the air to breathe. Reluctantly, he loosened his grip a little. The broom regained a semblance of stability.

The hours passed, slowly. At one point, the wind calmed down enough for Draco to decide he wanted to make conversation.

"Are we there yet, Potter?"

"You said something, Malfoy?"

Not that Potter would appreciate the gesture.

"I said, ARE WE THERE YET, POTTER?"

"Fuck. Don't yell into my ear!"

"So are we?"

"Does it look like we are?"

"I don't know, Scarhead. My eyes are closed."

"So bloody open them!"

"Nah. I'll get an irritation from the wind."

So they continued to fly and more hours passed.

"Potter, this trousers are itchy."

Sullen silence.

"Where'd you get them, anyway?"

Still no answer.

"You stole the clothes, didn't you? Hah!"

Nothing.

"Just tell me that at least you stole the damn clothes from a shop, as opposed to stripping them off some drunken Muggle beggar!"

Now Draco was really starting to panic.

"You didn't! Fuck you, Scarhead, what if they're infested with lice?!"

"Tough luck."

"I hate you, Potter, son of a..."

About a dozen of curses later...

"Malfoy. MALFOY! Shut up!... Merlin, I didn't know you had such a foul mouth. I did steal the clothes from a shop. Their presumably clean. What now? Yeah, well, you're a pigheaded fuckwit of a bastard, too!"

Draco didn't try to initiate conversation after that. He felt he had gotten his point across, even if Potter had had the last word.

**Back to the present moment...**

Yes, Potter was still touchy. Not that Draco really wanted to chat with him, anyway. It was Potter's fault for everything that Draco was now. Dead and alive at the same time, a perversion of laws of nature—he actually didn't want to go there again. Self-pity could be a taxing affair. Perhaps he could resume moping tomorrow, after a good night sleep. What he needed now was a distraction. While picking on Potter would have been the obvious choice under different circumstances, right now Potter had a wand he could use, while Draco had a wand, period.

He scanned the room for another potential 'distraction' and his gaze fell upon what appeared to be a copy of 'Witch Weekly'. He swallowed a comment about Potter getting in touch with his feminine side, which most likely wouldn't have been appreciated, and silently stretched to get the magazine. Then his eyes fell on the first page and he almost dropped it.

Potter was there, in the photo, making out with another guy.

He must've made a sound that betrayed his utter shock because next thing he knew was Potter standing next to him, trying to snatch the magazine from his hands.

"Give me the bloody magazine, Draco!"

Oh, so he was 'Draco' again now?

He ducked. Perhaps if Potter had asked nicely... Well, no, even if Potter had asked nicely, Draco wouldn't have given him the stupid magazine. The best chance Potter would've had to retrieve it from his hands was to have feigned indifference and waited until Draco got bored of it. Draco didn't see how Potter could force the 'Witch' out of his hands now, not without some serious touching occurring, and he was almost certain Potter would cut his own hands before touching him again. Which was perfectly fine with Draco.

"Come and get it, Potter," he snarled.

Harry stopped abruptly and gazed at Draco with an almost frightened look in his eyes.

It was official. Potter couldn't stand even the thought of touching him. Which was perfectly fi—screw that! Salazar's balls, how he hated Potter! Potter had no right to do this to him. Cast a spell, make him live again, then act like Draco was a freakish creation. What a damn hypocrite! Like it was Draco's fault. Like he'd asked for it. Like he'd been given a choice.

He still couldn't understand how Potter had been able to do it. Not 'how' as in 'what was the mechanism of the spell' (although he was wondering about that, too), but 'how' as in 'where had the bastard found all the nerve'. Whatever had pushed Potter to do it must've been pretty intense. Draco simply couldn't figure it out. Sure, Potter must've felt guilty for his death to some extent, but Draco knew that guilt was one of the most easily digested feelings. Even the most blameworthy of criminals would find reasons to clear his conscience of his crimes. 'Saint' Potter should've been able to chase any trace of guilt away in the blink of an eye. If his conscience had gotten too noisy he could have argued with it that Draco had fooled him, betrayed him, forced his kissed on him. Yeah, Potter could've even told himself that (even though Draco knew precisely how much Golden Boy had enjoyed those kisses) because Potter was, after all, a hypocrite.

So, no, guilt alone couldn't have been it. Maybe Potter missed him, missed whatever it had been between them those few last days at Hogwarts. It was a good theory, especially because it titillated Draco's ego, except... The magazine he was still clutching fiercely told an obviously different story. Potter hadn't lied when he said he could find enough willing bed partners on his own. It made Draco angry. He'd always been possessive about his things and Potter had been his, even if for a brief time. Potter wouldn't even had a clue he was into guys if Draco hadn't shown him how good it could be.

"You are such a tart, Potter," he observed, fighting to keep his voice casual.

"Like you're the one to judge!" Harry heatedly replied.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I wasn't the one spreading my legs a year a ago!"

Was Potter actually blushing? Because he didn't have a reason to blush. If someone should blush, it was Draco, who, as Potter had so profusely put it, had been the one 'spreading his legs'.

Draco didn't blush. He sneered.

"You—begged—me—do—it—Potter. 'Malfoy, make me forget', 'Malfoy, let me see you naked', 'Malfoy—'""

"Shut up!"

To say 'make me' would have been too easy, too... clichéd. And, yet, Draco would have said it, but he didn't think he'd be able to control his anger if Potter gave him that frightened look again.

"All right," he said instead.

"What?!"

"I agree with you for a change, Scarhead, and I'm saying 'good night', all in the space of the same minute. Consider it an early birthday present. Is that the door to my bedroom?"

Harry gaped at him. Draco winked.

"That's my..." Harry protested weakly.

"Now, now, 'Harry', hasn't your dear mother taught you—"

"Don't dare talk about my mother!"

"—to be polite with your guests? You have a perfectly comfortable sofa right here."

And Draco slammed the bedroom door behind him.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Harry couldn't sleep. His sofa wasn't that comfortable to begin with and he kept thinking about Draco, who was now in his bed.

He had doubts about everything. About Draco, about his own sanity, about right and wrong, and about how 'right' and 'wrong', when it came down to it, were just words. But as far as words went, he'd done the wrong thing this time. The coldness of Draco's skin both frightened him and made him angry. How could he have been so stupid to believe the Book? Draco Malfoy, or whatever was that cold body resting in his bed at the moment, had no answers to his questions and Harry didn't even know what the questions were anymore. Questions had brought all this mess upon himself and then, all of the sudden, ceased to matter, just like that. Answers to needless questions would be just as needless, even if they were offered to him.

Another thing that didn't let him sleep was not being able to shake the taste of Draco's kiss off. Almost an entire day had passed, and it still crept on his lips, inside his mouth, on his tongue and with it, along came the cold. He knew he should try to chase the memory away, but instead he played it over and over again with his eyes closed. He also knew his eyes shouldn't be closed, because he couldn't afford to fall asleep before confronting the Book. It didn't matter. He wouldn't fall asleep anyway, not even if his eyes were closed, so there was no harm done if he just stayed like this a little longer... before getting up and doing nasty things to the Book... he had to be sure Draco had fallen asleep first... so just a little longer... He would open his eyes soon enough and go looking for the bloody Book and do very nasty things to It indeed.

But Draco's mouth had been wet... So many weird thoughts went around one's head at night. Of course any mouth was wet.

He would open his eyes and get the Book.

...Draco's mouth, wet and cold, was trailing kissed on his bare chest.

Only his chest couldn't be bare because he still wore his pyjama top. And he was in his flat. Not the motel room. He would have to keep this in mind. He would open his eyes. Just a little longer, so that Draco would fall asleep—in his bed—why was Draco in his bed, anyway?...

...Draco was sitting in his lap, sucking Harry's lower lip, the kiss tasting salty; like tears.

Just like tears.

He knew he should feel the urge to run. That was how it had happened.

...Draco held his wrists in a tight grip above his head and his body was pressed against Harry's, moving steadily.

It was the Book's fault for everything.

...Draco was kissing his closed eyes. Just a moment longer and Harry would open them. Then Draco's lips were on his cheeks, the corner of his mouth, his chin, leaving damp, chilly trails behind. Then Harry spoke and told Draco, "I want you." But he didn't really. Couldn't. There were suddenly two Harrys, one holding Draco in his lap and another one who watched. The first Harry wanted to shake the cold body off, but he couldn't, because the second Harry wanted to watch.

I want you, I want you, I want you, Harry, the one who was entwined with the cold body in the armchair, was telling Draco. And the other Harry watched how Draco's body stiffened and his skin withered and his lips turned a sickly shade of blue until the first Harry held only dead flesh in his arms.

Harry opened his eyes. His heart had swollen to the dimensions of a Bludger inside his chest and he wasn't able to breathe properly. He lifted a shaking hand to his face and felt the wetness of tears. It had been just a nightmare.

::Just a nightmare,:: he told himself, and finally his heart seemed to deflate to its right dimensions and started beating again. As he stood lying on the sofa, pyjama damp with sweat, all the exhaustion of the previous sleepless night followed by a day spent flying in the freezing air sunk into his bones and his eyes closed again without further conscious thoughts.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Draco couldn't sleep either. He hoped Potter's sofa had turned out every inch as uncomfortable as it felt when he sat on the ratty thing. He hoped Potter was tossing and turning on the sofa just like Draco was tossing and turning now because he was in Potter's bed, wearing Potter's pyjamas, hearing Potter's voice in his head.

::You have no right, Malfoy.::

::Those are my questions, Malfoy.::

::Why couldn't you leave me alone? Why did you do it? Why did you die?::

Why, why, why. Draco would have liked some answers himself. But had Potter deigned to tell him anything? No. Bastard! Maybe he'd tell Potter why, some day... tomorrow. Maybe. Tell him something after all. Not the truth, just... something.

::What do you want to hear, 'Harry'?:: Draco rolled on his stomach, imagining Harry's face twisted with righteous anger. ::I did it because it I knew you so well, because I knew it would make you stand up to him and fight, and defeat him. I did it because I couldn't live with the thought I sent you to death, and my own life didn't matter if it was the price to be paid for yours.::

Too corny... Draco frowned slightly in the dark, wondering if Potter would fall for that.

::You'd like to hear that, wouldn't you, 'Harry'? Or does it make you feel guilty? Perhaps what you really need to hear is this...:: He could put up his best disgusted mien and spit out the words. ::I did it because I hated you so much, you bastard, and I wanted to fuck with your mind. I did it because I knew you so well, and knew you wouldn't understand, and my own life didn't matter if it was the price to be paid for screwing your mind irrevocably.::

Too dramatic. But Potter would just love to hear that, wouldn't he? It would give him an excuse to remember he hated Draco in case he'd forgotten.

::Or, perhaps, it wasn't even about you. Did it occur to you?:: Probably not. Potter was used to everything being about him. Egotist prick. ::Perhaps I had no idea what would happen to you afterwards. Perhaps I didn't care. Perhaps I was tired and needed a way out. And I simply needed it to mean something. Or perhaps I did it for the dramatic effect. What about that, 'Harry'?::

Too gratuitous. Potter wouldn't believe him.

He rolled on his back again. He wished he could sleep.

-o–#–O–#–o-

At first, Harry thought it was the sound of voices in his kitchen that had waken him up, but the rapid beat of his heart told a different story. He'd been having another nightmare, yet he couldn't remember any part of it. His heart was thundering so hard inside his chest; it must have been the pain that pulled him out of his dream. And his neck hurt from the awkward position he'd been sleeping. Just great. He didn't have too much time to discover just what else was wrong this morning, because just as he opened his eyes and stared blearily around...

"Maybe we should come back later—Oh, you're already awake, Harry!"

"Hermione?"

"Good morning to you too," she greeted him smiling. Another figured walked into the room behind her.

"Morning, Har"–yawn–"ry!"

"Ron?! Hermione?! What are you two doing here?... I mean... it's Sunday morning."

"Precisely," said Hermione.

"We've come to take you out during daytime for a change, mate," announced Ron.

"Er...?"

"What Ron means to say is were not going to let you hide between these four walls all day long anymore. You need to come back to the world, Harry. A lot of people miss you..."

"I bet they do," Harry muttered grimly, starting to recover from his surprise. "Especially Rita Skeeter."

"Forget about the likes of her! We miss you," Hermione stressed, not noticing that the bedroom door was starting to open. Harry did and practically leapt to it, clutching the door handle, desperately trying to keep it still while not blatantly appearing to do so.

"Sure then... You're right... I'll...erm... go change why don't you wait for me in the kitchen?" he burst, aware that he was babbling.

Both his friends eyed him with suspicion. Thankfully, the door handle only rattled for half a dozen more times (Damn Malfoy! Couldn't he take a hint!?) before finally ceasing. Harry released it, trying, and failing, to smile.

"I'll... then... I'll just go into my bedroom." He pointed the door, but made no move to open it. "To change," he added tensely. "I won't be long."

"Oh." Hermione put one hand over her mouth like she'd just had an epiphany. "Come, Ron." She tugged at Ron's sleeve. "We'll wait for Harry... in the kitchen."

As soon as they were gone from the living room, Harry turned around and in less than a second he was inside his bedroom, leaning heavily against the door. He fought against the sudden urge to shiver. It was colder in here than in the rest of the flat and Harry didn't want to think about why. Draco was glaring at him from the other side of the room, wearing Harry's favourite pair of pyjamas.

"What's hunting to make you its breakfast this morning, Potter?"

"Ron and Hermione are here," he hissed. "Keep your voice down."

"Really?" Draco sounded very interested and not particularly preoccupied by the possibility of being heard. "Weasel is here with the Mudblood?"

"I would appreciate if you stopped calling my friends 'Mudblood' and 'Weasel'."

"Can I call them 'Big-Tooth' and 'Blotchy'?"

"No!" Harry replied angrily, keeping as low a tone as he could. Draco smirked.

"Why are you so jumpy, Potter?"

"I'm not jumpy," he said slowly, struggling to control his outburst. "You're a conceited git who doesn't give a damn about others!"

Draco ignored the comment.

"Can I still call you 'Scarhead'?"

"Can I stop you? Look, Malfoy, you can call me anything as long as you don't leave this room while they're here."

The blond made a show of pretending to consider the offer. He studied his nails intently, like they hold the answers to all the problems in the universe. He looked at the ceiling, assuming an intrigued mien and nodding from time to time, as if the bloody ceiling was offering precious advice. He chewed his bottom lip and frowned theatrically. Harry knew he did it only to annoy him. He wished he hadn't left his wand in the living room. Then he could've silenced and stunned Draco, and maybe locked him inside the wardrobe, instead of trying to strike an impossible bargain with a being who probably thought poisonous snakes made nice pets.

"Well, that's not much of a deal, Potter," the former Slytherin finally drawled. "It's not as if I've ever asked for your permission to call you names."

Harry gritted his teeth and walked to his wardrobe, not looking at Draco as he spoke again.

"What do you want so we can have a deal?" He was now rummaging inside the wardrobe for clothes. Ron and Hermione wouldn't wait for him in the kitchen forever.

"How about I play nice and hide until you get your friends out of here and then we discuss what you owe me... later?"

"So you can decide that you want me to jump from the top of the building, naked? I don't think so."

"I need time to consider this, Potter and you obviously don't have time." Draco took a step towards the door. "Come to think about it, I miss the way Weasel's face turns the colour of his hair when he's angry." Another step. "'Course, if he sees me, he might faint from shock first."

Harry clenched his fists and remained silent. Draco was only a step away from him now and a couple more from the door, and stood waiting with his arms crossed over his chest.

"I'm not as unreasonable as you might think. I'll give you three choices, three things I want and you can pick one and make my day. I'll even refrain from anything that involves your public humiliation. How about that?"

"Incredibly generous," Harry snorted. "But, to make everything clear, if I agree to your three-wishes game, you'll have to hide every time I have visitors. Nobody can see you. That's the deal. It'll be Ron and Hermione most of the times and not even they come that often, so it's not that much of a chore."

"You're aware, Potter, that changes the whole scale of our little agreement."

"Well, I'm sure you'll make me pay for it more than accordingly."

"Good." Draco smiled like the cat which caught the mouse and was in the mood to play. "Because I'm sure I will, too."

Harry laid his final choice of clothes for the day on the bed.

"Would you please turn around so I can change?"

"I didn't know you were shy, Potter," Draco said, faking amazement rather blatantly. "There's no part of you I haven't seen before, anyway."

"Fine. Stare if you must. See if I care."

Draco sat down on the bed and did precisely that.

-o–#–O–#–o-

Meanwhile, in Harry's kitchen...

Ron and Hermione sat at the table in relative silence; relative, because Ron didn't seem able to refrain from tapping his fingers impatiently on the wooden surface.

"Do you think Harry's hiding something from us, Hermione?"

Hermione lifted her gaze from the floor she'd been studying intently for the last couple of minutes.

"I thought that much was obvious, Ron."

When Ron didn't say more, Hermione sat up and proceeded to inspect Harry's fridge as a way to calm her restlessness. The conclusion was not a happy one and it showed plainly in the crease on her forehead.

"Empty as always. Now wonder he's so thin," she whispered, more to herself, although Ron could hear it pretty clearly.

"You sound like my Mum," Ron complained, only half-jokingly.

"Ron," she sighed in exasperation.

"All right, I know, I know." A pause. "Hermione, do you think that Harry's found himself a girlfriend and doesn't want us to know?"

"Er, well, Ron..." She didn't really thought that. How did they get from discussing Harry's fridge to discussing Harry's love life? Ron's tapping was really starting to become annoying.

"What?"

"I think that, maybe," Hermione said slowly, as if weighting her words, "Harry's found himself a boyfriend."

"Oh." There was another pause and no more tapping, possibly because Ron's hand had frozen in the air. "Why would you think that?"

"It's pretty obvious if you know where to look. If it was a girl, he would have told us about her, so it must be a guy. That's why he was so anxious to get us out of the living-room. He still feels awkward because of that photo."

"Oh," it was all Ron's eloquence could manage. Hermione tutted disapprovingly. Yet another brief silence followed.

"Are you sure you have the portkey, Hermione?"

"For the thousandth time, yes, I have it," she answered in an exasperated voice. "It's in my pocket."

"Can I have a look at it?"

"For the thousandth time, no. Not before Harry's here."

Of course, Ron knew this, because Hermione had explained it to him quite in detail before coming here.

"What if he wants to bring his, um, boyfriend along?" the redhead queried, sounding more like someone who asked 'What if the a big rock falls from the skies?'

"It's Harry's choice," Hermione explained patiently. "I'm sure he's a nice guy if Harry likes him."

"Were you talking about me?"

Harry was standing in the door frame, a small, battered backpack on his right shoulder, looking questioningly at his friends. Ron looked at Hermione. Hermione looked at Ron. Then both of them looked at their hands without any apparent reason.

"Actually, Harry..." Hermione started uneasily, not sure about Harry's reaction at discussing a boyfriend he was so keen to hide from them.

"Is your boyfriend coming too?" Ron intervened, putting an end to her dilemma.

"My—WHAT?!" Harry was definitely flustered and, if nothing else, that was a clear give-away.

"Smooth, Ron, really smooth."

"How... why would you think I have a boyfriend?"

Hermione rolled her eyes all-knowledgeably.

"Oh, Harry. It's all right if you don't want to introduce us just yet, but we know he's in your bedroom." Ron grimaced at her blunt statement and its implications, so Hermione glared for a second at the redhead before continuing. "The three of us are going to have a very serious discussion soon—and Ron, please, stop making faces—but it's not on today's schedule... speaking of which, we should be going."

Harry's immense relief for the change of topic was clearly visible on his face.

"Where are we going?"

Hermione smiled.

"It's a surprise."

"What's in the backpack?" Ron inquired.

"Erm, just stuff."

Ron looked like he wanted to push the matter, but eventually refrained from it. Hermione raised an eyebrow, but didn't comment otherwise.

"Now, give me your hand," she instructed and Harry obeyed. "Ron, take Harry's hand. Good. Here we go."

Then she reached inside her pocket and they all disappeared.

-o–#–O–#–o-

The living room was warmer, Draco noticed. Apparently, not only was he cold, but he was also leaking cold. It explained why Potter had been shivering inside the bedroom—not that Draco cared about Potter's comfort. Quite the opposite, in fact. Draco was furious. Potter had run away with his pathetic friends and discarded Draco like a broken doll.

He paced nervously up and down the room, grimacing in distaste at the amount of trash decorating the floor and furniture. He paused in front of the Catapults poster to glare at the Harry in the picture, who glared right back. Kicking a discarded Quidditch glove into the wall and muttering under his breath, he strode to the kitchen.

Draco couldn't remember ever setting foot into a kitchen before or indeed desiring to do so. However, boredom was really getting to him so he thought he might feed himself, although he wasn't really hungry. There was an uncomfortable feeling gathering inside himself—a feeling of being out of place here in Potter's flat and in the living word once more, and he didn't know which bothered him more, or whether it was the combination that made his situation so difficult to bear.

Luckily, Potter's kitchen momentarily distracted him from the constant uneasiness, mostly because he didn't know what to make of it. The most familiar thing in it was the fireplace, although he thought it was a weird place to have one. At home, there had been a 'fireplace chamber' designated for the sole purpose of receiving guests via the Floo network, and there were several more fireplaces scattered across the mansion for the private use of family members, but he didn't think they had one in the kitchen. The house-elves would have had little use for it at any rate. Then there was a rough shaped table, some uncomfortable-looking chairs, a sink and a big, white box that hummed quite spitefully at him and was attached to the wall by a white cord about as thick as his forefinger. A stack of plates was visible on top of it. Draco was reluctant to have anything to do with the white box, which was obviously of Muggle fabrication. He decided to ignore it as best as he could for the time being. There was no food or drinks in sight, but the fact didn't considerably faze him.

He reached on top of the humming contraption and picked a large plate and a glass, as well as a knife and a fork. He set them on the table, pulled a chair, sat down and patiently waited for the food to appear.

Nothing happened.

Damn it, that was how it had worked at Hogwarts, so where was the food?

After five minutes of glaring at the plate, a nasty suspicion began forming into Draco's mind—namely, that he would be forced to prepare his meal by himself if he ever wanted to eat. Lucky he wasn't hungry, then. As on cue, his stomach picked up that particular moment to make itself heard. Draco almost groaned in a very unbecoming manner. It appeared that he was hungry, after all.

Mentally cursing Harry for leaving him to starve inside his horrible flat (which must've been the twit's idea of a revenge for the earlier inadvertent strip-show, Draco inferred), he turned his gaze to the white box, which had actually stopped humming at some point during his glaring match with the plate. The box was the obvious place for storing food. Curiosity and an empty stomach prompted him to give up all precaution and rise from the chair to walk to the strange Muggle contraption. He tugged at the door, which resisted a little before opening. The resuming of the humming sound made him jump and shove the door closed, although the box didn't stop humming once it was sealed again. But the quick glance inside had assured him that the box was mostly empty anyway. Also, he was sure he'd felt a cool airwave coming from it while the door had been open. At least he wasn't the only one leaking cold around here.

Now in an irritable mood, Draco strode to the front door and pressed the handle. All precaution be damned, he wasn't going to stay inside this garbage bin of a place and die of starvation! The door refused to open. Cursing, Draco went back to the living room and started looking for the key. After several minutes of fruitless attempts, he finally gave up, concluding the unsuccessful search by slamming his fist into the closest wall.

Simmering with frustration, he walked back into the bedroom and dropped onto the unmade bed unceremoniously. He closed his eyes and, for some more minutes, fought to keep his anger under a semblance of control, breathing heavily. When he calmed down a bit, he let his gaze wonder, inspecting the room. Only the most basic of furniture pieces; no adornments; long, dark curtains, but no carpet. On the nightstand to his right there was a photograph of a young couple holding a baby. Draco picked it up to study it more carefully, although he could guess without too much of a mental strain who they were. The man might've been Potter, except for his brown eyes and lack of scar. The woman had beautiful green eyes that matched the eyes of the baby. Draco threw it back on the nightstand, not caring if it broke. Had he been able to use his wand, he would've incinerated it without a second thought.

He felt trapped, confined between the walls of the flat not only by the locked door, but also by his lack of a place in the world. Where would he go, even if he would unlock the door? As a matter of fact, nothing stopped him from using the fireplace and getting out of here faster than he could say 'Floo powder', all locks be damned, but the question remained. Where would he go? Returning to his family's mansion was out of the question, of course. He had betrayed the Malfoy name and Malfoys weren't exactly known for their forgiveness; now that it came to that, he was a bit baffled they'd buried him in the family crypt despite the exploits leading to his death. He wondered what had happened to his parents, not so sure he wanted to know, in the end. One thing he was sure of, nonetheless. If his father was still alive, then as far as Lucius was concerned Draco would remain as dead as possible for as long as possible.

The rest of the Wizarding world was also off-limits for him. He had very little means to disguise himself and somebody was bound to recognise him sooner or later, should he risk that kind of exposure. He wasn't at all anxious to find out what the Ministry did to dead people illegally restored to life. The last alternative was life among Muggles, which was too dreadful a thought to contemplate even hypothetically. There weren't in truth other choices for him but staying put right where he was, hiding in Potter's flat.

He didn't understand his body anymore and it frightened him. The cold emanating from his skin, always surrounding him was a ever-present reminder that he didn't belong to the world of the living; yet he wasn't dead any longer, either. He didn't know what he was. His heart was still beating, but faintly. He placed a hand over his chest and felt it throbbing underneath, barely, like it was always on the edge of stopping. He lifted his hands and studied them with a distant interest. His pale skin—a family trait, a sign of his pureblood lineage—was now almost translucent. He traced the blue line of a vein along his arm. It was disturbingly accentuated. His skin felt stiff somehow, but still soft. He was convinced he would nevertheless bleed if cut, but was a bit doubtful about the exact colour and consistency of his blood.

But what disquieted Draco the most, even more than this new, almost lifeless body, was being forced to give up control over his existence. He depended on Potter for everything now. If Potter wanted to let him starve, there was nothing he could do but starve. He was in Potter's house, wearing Potter's clothes and sleeping in Potter's bedroom. He smirked at the thought. At least, that had been a small victory—kicking Potter out of his own bed, although, of course, Draco would have considered sharing if Potter had acted less like a bastard.

All of the sudden, he wasn't feeling that bad anymore. He stood up, divesting himself of Harry's pyjamas as he walked to the bathroom. Immersing himself in a bathtub full of hot water—that was what he needed to put his thoughts in order and, hopefully, drive some of the cold away. He would make plans and feel better. Control wasn't something one was given, it was something that had to be gained. He would gain control, first over himself, then over his prison and ultimately over his questionable life. And maybe over Potter, if he played his cards well.

It would be easier now that Potter owned him. The thought cheered him up even as he finished filling the tub and sank contentedly in the steaming water. His mind was already spinning with plans and new possibilities. He would start small at first. No need to push Wonder Boy too much from the beginning, was it? If the flat was going to be his scene for the undefined future, he could maybe make Potter clean the place up and provide Draco at least some of the comfort he had been used to. Or, even better, he could persuade Potter to get a house elf. It shouldn't be much of a provocation.

He grinned as he rose slightly and commenced to soap his upper body. He had to keep in mind that the water wouldn't stay hot for too long with his body in it. Oh, well, the drawbacks of being not-quite-dead and yet not-quite-alive.

End of Chapter Five


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